by
Bilan Hashi
Queen’s University
(October, 2016)
Extending work that examines Somali female identity, this thesis addresses how gendered
subjectivity is articulated and performed within the Somali social imaginary vis-à-vis notions of
“tradition,” modernity, colonialism, and post-colonialism. The project starts with the construction
of an idealized Somali womanhood (what I refer to as gabar xishood leh, a modest girl), the
affective pull and attachment of this identity formation, and the compulsion to perform it. In part,
I illustrate how this gendered paradigm lays the conditions for being and belonging within the
Somali collectivity. As the gabar xishood leh discourse is embedded with a particular conception
of modesty, female desire and agency is bracketed outside the gabar xishood leh ideal. As such,
this distancing precludes collective belonging and opens up real possibilities of unbelonging. The
negotiation of modesty and female sexual desire is the focus of this project. I ask: how do women
exert sexual agency, ‘voice,’ and modesty in ways that allow them to participate fully in the
(various but often silenced) performances of Somali womanhood? In looking at classical Somali
female poets (1899-1944 in pastoral lands of Northern Somalia) and modern Somali female poets
(1969-1989 in the urban centre of Mogadishu, Somalia), I argue these poets have hybrid
subjectivities that allow the expression of sexual desire thorough the subversion of normative
codes of modesty. In addition to re-signified codes, specific spaces such as alternative publics,
and the agentive acts of speaking through codes and performative listening, open up the different
trajectories of how classical and modern Somali female poets creatively, socially, and politically
participate in the Somali public sphere. Using theories of affect, hybridity, in-between space, and
public culture, among others, I question how the nexus of modesty, sexual desire, and Somali
femininity not only exposes lacunae in the Somali collective imagination but creates an
ii
unconventional map of Somali womanhood—a map that re-imagines gabar xishood leh in its
complexity.
iii
Acknowledgements
naxariisto). Without her, I would not and could not be the person I am today. For my Aabo and
Hoyo, thank you for all the support. There were times when I needed that extra push. This has
been a long time coming—I hope I have made you proud. I love you both. My brothers,
Mohamed, Ahmed, and Hussein, thank you for all the late nights and your patience in listening to
me “droning on” about this project, I am sure you never want to hear the words ‘xishood’ or
‘gabar xishood leh’ again. To my cousin Muna, Edo Asha and Edo Zahra, thank you for all the
times you were there for me to bounce ideas off you, your help with the clarity and linear
progression in my writings, and your editing ninja skills. Abti Abdillahi, thank you for all the
sheeko sheeko, you were invaluable in formulating my ideas around this project. For the rest of
my family, all my uncles, aunts, and cousins, thank you for the small but very meaningful ways
To my supervisor, Dr. Katherine McKittrick, thank you very much for your support,
because I have had you as a professor, supervisor, mentor, and a support system. You have been
generous with your time, feedback and dedication in enabling me to become the best academic
thinker and writer that I could be. From the beginning, you introduced new theoretical concepts
and theorists and pushed me to question my assumptions. At the same time, you allowed me the
intellectual space to grapple with and explore my ideas. If there was an issue with clarity or
contextualization, for example, you made no quibbles about alerting me about where
improvements could be made. I appreciate your candour and the ease with which you convey
iv
your feedback. When there were instances where doubt crept up in regards to my thesis, you
listened when needed be, encouraged when required, and pointed out moments of originality and
creativity in my work to get me back on track. To say this project would not be what it is without
you is an understatement.
Thank you to the members of my defense committee: Dr. Sarita Srivastava, Dr. Margaret
Pappano, and Dr. Elaine Power. I appreciate your time and support.
thank you so much for creating a safe, inviting and comfortable space. Thank you to Kathy Baer
and in particular, Terrie Easter Sheen for all your support, advice, and general help in making my
time here much smoother and more enjoyable. Dr. Scott Morgensen, I appreciate all your help
Idil, Sanchari, Ahsan, Altug, Nate and the rest of my friends, thank you for all your help,
v
Table of Contents
Abstract........................................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... iv
Methodological Framework............................................................................................... 13
Chapter 2 Theorizing Gabar Xishood Leh through Affective Ties and Ruptures ................ 23
Female Poetry................................................................................................................... 58
vi
Hybrid Discourses.............................................................................................................. 78
Chapter 4 Performative Listening and Female Intimate Publics in Modern Somali Female
Poetry ................................................................................................................................ 90
vii
viii
Chapter 1
Introduction
In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we
also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along
the way, or we are also living the stories we planted—knowingly or unknowingly—in
ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with
meaninglessness.
—Ben Okri1
I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean/ where the two overlap/ a gentle
coming together/ at other times and places a violent clash.
—Gloria Anzaldúa2
Blade Runner, circa 2003, I had my tongue professionally pierced. It was not my first, or
my second piercing. In fact, there were a quite a few body piercings that preceded it; as a
that was not the case. The most vocal critics were my parents: my mother bemoaned what
she considered a desecration of a God-given body and my father, more secular, dismissed it
as a sign of immaturity and a passing phase of rebellion. Despite the gendered differences
in their responses, however, both were vehement in their views of my piercing as an act
1
Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free (London: Phoenix House, 1997), 46, quoted in Thomas King, The
Truth About Stories (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2003), 153.
2
Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderland: The New Mestiza = La Frontera (San Francisco: Aunt Lute, 1999
[1987]), 23.
1
The rhetoric surrounding my parents’ dismay revolved around their concept of an
ideal Somali female, particularly the gendered expectations that inform dress and
behaviour. Words such as ‘modesty’ and ‘shame’ were tossed around, reinforcing the
Belatedly, I wondered if my parents suspected the erotic inclinations associated with oral
piercings, and whether that played a strong role in their disapproval—especially given that
my other piercings did not elicit the same reactions of dismay and disappointment. What
was clear to me, even though it was not verbally indicated, was the pivotal role that any
Ben Okri in the epigraph at the beginning of this chapter: “…we live by stories, we also
womanhood and the meanings that are ascribed to performances of certain Somali
discourse: alterative engagements with gender and gender identifications that reveal the
myriad ways that women negotiate and resist hegemonic constructions of Somali
womanhood. As Michel Foucault writes, “[t]here can be no commentary unless, below the
language one is reading and deciphering, there runs the sovereignty of an original Text….
The necessary proliferation of the exegesis is therefore measured, ideally limited, and yet
3
Okri, A Way of Being Free, 46, quoted in Thomas King, The Truth About Stories, 153.
2
ceaselessly animated by this silent dominion.”4 For me, what Foucault opens up are the
ways in which female sexual desire and agency can be understood below, or subversively
within, the narrative of modesty that tends to dominate definitions of Somali womanhood.
When I returned home from living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 2012, I wanted to
society. In 2014, when I began thinking about sexuality vis-à-vis modesty and femininity
within an Islamic context for this thesis, a kernel of an idea was planted. This idea later
became the theme of my novella. As often the case, creative inspiration arrives without
warning, and I grabbed the closest writing utensil—a blue-tipped sharpie for my white
I heard of a woman from across the sea who bewitched men on their Umrah
trips. She cast her spell making them forget their former lives. And they
become nation-less like her. Nothing else about her was known. Or maybe it
was intentionally forgotten.5
My story, of which these few lines are a small component, was shrouded in elements of
female sexual desire and agency. While perusing this passage later, I was struck by the
conjunction with female sexuality, as well as the hint of religiosity that comes with the
mention of Umrah.6 These terms underscore the power of female sexual desire, especially
4
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences (New York: Knopf
Doubleday Publishing Group, 2012), 45.
5
Bilan Hashi, Those Nights in Port Said (forthcoming).
6
Umrah is a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia—considered the holiest city for Muslims—at any
time of the year, as opposed to Hajj, which is only on specific days.
3
in a Saudi Arabian context and the geographic setting of the novella, where heterosexual
female sexuality was (is) feared and socially controlled through dress codes.7 But more than
that, I was intrigued by certain behaviours that seemed physical manifestations of modesty
noticed that my creative work understood belonging and unbelonging not as tied to the
nation-state or a specific territory, but rather as mediated through sexuality and sexual
practices.
As the word “nationless” indicates within the story, the woman, as well as the men
who succumb to her bewitching sexual spells, suffer the same fate: they are deemed
stateless people. As well, in this story, explicit heterosexual female desire and agency
deconstructs the barriers and borders that systematically uphold specific gender
expectations (as seen in the imposition of statelessness). At the same time, and just as
the confines of established gendered boundaries dictates the conditions for belonging,
My personal narrative and the creative story both open up issues of belonging, and
raise deeper questions about attachment, desire, and affect. For example: who or what is
one supposed to belong to? To where and to what do we claim to belong—to a community,
7
Saddeka Arebi, Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 1-2.
4
to a region, to a home, to an ideal? How do people negotiate different conditions or
modalities of existence in conjunction with their desire for belonging? The questions
theoretical debates in the areas of postcolonial theory, theories of migration and borders,
She writes: “…I, a mestiza, continually walk out of one culture and into another, because I
am in all cultures at the same time.”9 Anzaldúa’s example illustrates the fluidity in
boundaries and shifting identity formations, which allow for multiple imaginings of
belonging. At the same time, her work insists on migratory identities precisely because she
has been—as a lesbian Latina—displaced within and cast out of her broader community.
The multiplicities embedded in belonging, then, also imply removal and/or displacement.
8
In this thesis, I use theories of migration and diaspora as an analytical lens for Somali female
poetry contained within Somalia; this is, in part, intentional due to the issues these theories raise in
relation to social belonging, doubleness, and authenticity. As Gayatri Gopinath states in Impossible
Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall expand the
notion of diaspora from the original definition of home, exile and return to one of a fluid identity
based on difference and hybridity. Gopinath further utilizes this concept of the revised definition of
diaspora as “potential to foreground notions of impurity and inauthenticity that resoundingly reject
the…absolutism at the center of nationalist projects” (Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures [Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005], 7). It is
this fluidity and complexity that is understated in Somali female poetry and which I would like to
pay particular attention to. In this way, dualistic trajectories of Somali female poetry blur the
boundaries between the core (hegemonic social customs) and periphery (embodied social practices)
regarding Somali womanhood, modesty, and female sexuality. The ‘blurring’ highlights the
numerous identifying sites and the multiplicity of engagements of Somali female poets in relation to
the previously stated notions. By introducing “difference” in a imagined static conception of Somali
womanhood, I lay claim to the further destabilizing aspect of hybridity of Somali female poetry
which debunks normative discourses and opens new possibilities of being and belonging within
Somali womanhood.
9
Anzaldúa, Borderland: The New Mestiza = La Frontera, 99.
5
Through the lens of displacement or removal from a homeland or community, belonging is
defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and
diversity.”11
While Anand and Hall specifically refer to the complexity of diasporic belongings
and displacements, similar work has been done in relation to religious or cultural minorities
navigating the nation and faith systems they do not adhere to. Vincent Crapazano’s work
with the Harki community illustrates the impossibility of a uniform belonging; he argues
that the Harki community asserts a discourse that both claims and disclaims the Algerian
analysis of the marginalization and alienation in the Harki community, Crapazano uses the
term “apartness” to describe the perilous position involved in the longing to belong and the
10
Dibyesh Anand, “Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position,” South Asian Diaspora 1, no. 2
(2009): 104.
11
Stuart Hall, “Cultural Identity and Diaspora,” in Diaspora and Visual Culture: Representing
Africans and Jews, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 31.
12
Vincent Crapanzano, The Harkis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 7.
6
disavowal of a legitimate belonging.13 “Apartness,” he writes, “implies the desire not to be
misrecognize.”14
particularly salient for my discussion below.15 The Somali female poets that I explore in
this thesis negotiate belonging in relation to female modesty and sexuality through their
hybrid subjectivities. I refer to these poets as hybrid because they inhabit and are navigating
different kinds of gendered expectations that circulate within their nation. Hybridity is
illuminated by and within these very complex gendered locations, national affiliations, and
histories. Contained within hybridity, and keeping in mind Stuart Hall’s insistence on the
13
Ibid., 7.
14
Ibid., 7.
15
The concept of belonging is also taken up in theories of gender, displacement, and African
literature, albeit differently than my usage. One core theme, the division between the private and
public spheres, is at the forefront of women’s social and political participation in African works of
fiction. In the context of European colonialism in West Africa, literary works depicted women’s
political activities as regulated and confined to the domestic arena: see Anthonia C. Kalu, Women,
Literature, and Development in Africa (Lewisville, NJ: Africa World Press, 2001). In Maghrebi and
Egyptian women’s literature, the negotiation of silenced women’s voices in the public sphere was
prevalent in the postcolonial era: see Nawal El Saadawi, The Fall of the Imam (London: Telegram
Books, 2009), and also Leila Abouzeid, The Last Chapter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
The demarcation between the home and street is particularly salient when it comes to issues of
female sexuality. While I acknowledge the site of domesticity as the origin of intimacy, the public
fixation on controlling sexuality and desire is relevant in that it sets out the conditions for
discursively produced subjectivity and affective belonging. In other words, the disavowal of
gendered spatial segregation is intrinsically connected to social displacement, particularly its
instrumentality in drawing the boundaries that dictate gendered social nuances. This is evident
within postcolonial Somali female literature which focuses on the complex interplay between
female sexuality, social belonging, and Somali womanhood: see Saida Herzi, “Against the Pleasure
Principle,” Index on Censorship 19, no. 9 (1990): 19-20.
7
“necessary heterogeneity and diversity” within identity claims, is unbelonging.16
Unbelonging draws attention to the loss of particular forms of sociality. The penchant to
associate with others and to construct social formations based on common or shared
ideologies, especially as they relate to nation and/or homeland, is called into question.
Importantly, the theme of religion, specifically Islam, underwrites the work of the Somali
poets I examine here—so questions of hybridity and apartness are, in this thesis, informed
by the ways in which practices of sociality, displacement, and gender are inflected by faith.
within new African minority communities, particularly the Somali diaspora.18 When it
16
For further explanation of unbelonging, see Judith Butler and Gayarti Chakravorty Spivak, Who
Sings the Nation-State? Language, Politics, Belonging (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007);
Nira Yuval-Davis, “Belonging and the politics of belonging,” Pattern of Prejudice 3 (2006): 197-
214; Mike Savage et al., Globalization and Belonging (London: Sage Publications, 2005); Ann-
Dorte Christensen, “Belonging and UnBelonging from an Intersectional Perspective,” Gender,
Technology and Development 13, no. 1 (2009): 21-41.
17
For theories on doubleness within Black communities, see for instance: W.E.B. Du Bois, The
Souls of Black Folk (New York: Vintage/Library of America, 1990 [1903]); Paul Gilroy, The Black
Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993);
within other minority formations, see Yuk Wah Chan, Vietnamese-Chinese Relationships at the
Borderlands: Trade, Tourism and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 2013); David Garbin,
“A Diasporic Sense of Place: Dynamics of Spatialization and Transnational Political Fields among
Bangladeshi Muslims in Britain,” in Transnational Ties: Cities, Identities, and Migrations, ed.
Michael Peter Smith and John Eade (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008): 147-63;
Ayhan Kaya, “Aesthetics of Diaspora: Contemporary Minstrels in Turkish Berlin,” Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): 43-62.
18
For differing theories on doubleness: on African migratory communities, see Khalid Koser, New
African Diasporas (London: Routledge, 2003); Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Ethiopian Musical
Invention in Diaspora: A Tale of Three Musicians,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies
15, no. 2/3 (2006): 303-320; specifically on the Somali diaspora, see Rima Berns-McGown,
Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London and Toronto (Toronto: University of
Toronto, 1999).
8
comes to mainland Somalia, however, this doubleness is under-theorized.19 The
organizing questions for this thesis: if displacement and doubleness uncover an emotional
ideologies) and, at the same time, engender the experience of feeling alienated within those
spaces, how do these processes inform the experiences of Somali female poets?
unbelonging stems from how, at times, the complicated nature of sociality is undermined
Somali culture and religion.20 The singular narrative attempts to construct a homogeneous
category of what it means to be “Somali” and, in this, conceals the silences and pluralities
that enunciate different ways of being and belonging. This erases many people who exist
outside the “traditional” Somali belief system, such as racial, gendered, queer, and religious
minority communities. At the same time, the singular narrative silences alternative gender
performances that are produced in relation to but not necessarily beholden to Somali culture
19
In regards to doubleness and minority groups in Somalia, see H.Y. Mire, “Somali Stories as a Site
of Knowledge (Re/De) Construction” (paper presented at Reimagining Somali Studies: Colonial
Pasts, Postcolonial Futures, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 14-15, 2016).
20
I am using “tradition” as an umbrella term that is interconnected to the religious and cultural
belief system that is practiced in the Somali community (inside and outside Somalia). I understand
that “tradition” and “traditional” are contested terms—and that they can reify the assumption that
“traditional” countries, “traditional women,” or “traditional” belief systems are “undeveloped” or
“backwards.” However, for reasons of clarity, I employ “tradition” to signal the Islamic religious
beliefs and values that exist within the Somali social imaginary. From here onward I put “tradition”
or “traditional” in scare quotes to draw attention to my uneasiness with the term. In Chapter 2,
which outlines my theoretical frame, I provide a comprehensive discussion of “tradition.” On the
critique of “tradition” see also: Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Under Western Eyes: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial Discourses,” Boundary 2, nos. 12:3-13:1 (1984): 333-358.
9
and Islam.
My thesis will explore the ways gabar xishood leh is negotiated by poets in
Somalia. Gabar xishood leh, in English, means: a modest girl or a girl with modest
behaviour.21 In this work I think about Somali modesty in relation to the themes of
womanhood and modesty are very relevant to the construction of Somali femininity. The
21
While it is a topic I do not attend to extensively in this thesis, my thinking about modesty has
been informed by the impact of Islam on Somali religious belief systems. In Chapter 2, the tensions
between Islam and “tradition” are cast as embedded and intertwined processes that shape identity
formation. It is important, though, to briefly note how Islam constructs modesty. The Arabic word
typically denoting modesty, al-hayaa, often translated as “shyness” or “modesty,” stems from
Islamic modes of conduct, al-adab al Islamiyya. Rather than directly denoting what is typically
understood in English as modesty, however, al-hayaa is an umbrella term—a metonymical
archipelago—related to coded Islamic dress, behaviours and customs. As such, “[t]o practice al-
hayaa means to be diffident, modest and able to feel and enact shyness” (Saba Mahmood, Politics
of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject [Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University
Press, 2004], 156). The Arabic word al-hayaa, from the origin al-hayaat, meaning life is the
concept of modesty, which is deeply embedded in the Islamic faith as an ethical endeavour to
produce a particular ideal self. In the Qur’an, the exegetical literature as well as the Hadith, the
‘prophetic traditions’ of Islam, there are over a dozen instances, which directly and indirectly
reference modesty. Surat Al Noor – The Light verse 24:30 illustrates, for example, the meaningful
connection between “believing women” and “particular behaviours,” reinforcing the parameters of
ethical female Islamic subjectivity of which modesty is key (The Qur’an, trans. M.A.S. Abdel
Haleem [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], 222). Surat Al Noor – The Light also lauds the
merits of modesty for men; however, as Saba Mahmood explains, the interpretations and
expectations of male and female attire and comportment significantly differ in Islamic habitus,
exposing the complicated interplay of collective agency and structural power in producing these
gendered distinctions. She states: “While all of the Islamic virtues are gendered (in that their
measure and standards vary when applied to men versus women), this is particularly true of shyness
and modesty (al-hayaa)” (Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist
Subject, 156). Nader al Jallad’s analysis of culturally based emotions in the Arabic language, of
which al-hayaa is one of the more prominent, also pinpoints the confluence of affective markers of
being to an intemporal attribute of desired femininity (Nader Al Jallad, “The concept of ‘shame’ in
Arabic: bilingual dictionaries and the challenge of defining culture-based emotions,” Language
Design 12 [2010]: 39).
10
term gabar xishood leh is an idealized construction of Somali womanhood, often enacted
and performed through certain dress codes, speech, and other gendered behaviours. I draw
attention to how female desire and agency are continually constructed outside the category
identification, the modest girl not only designates the conditions for being, but also grounds
This research will therefore fill in some empirical gaps in scholarship on Somali
and also think through how female sexual desire and agency are embedded in female
performances of xishood. This will draw attention to alternate performances of the meaning
of gabar xishood leh. By looking at Somali female poetry from two different periods in
Somali history (1899-1944 and 1969-1989) and two different locations (the pastoral lands
of Northern Somalia and the urban centre of Mogadishu, Somalia), my discussion will track
the dominance of the singular narrative of gabar xishood leh. This will allow me to trace
how modesty is poetically constructed while also drawing out the disruptions and
inconsistencies particular to each spatiotemporal location. In other words, I will explore the
nexus of themes and locations that emerge in these different historical and geographical
contexts, and argue that they offer us a way to think about gendered subjectivities that are
how gender is constructed in “traditional” Somali culture and religion, as there are visible
remnants of that influence in the poetry. Rather, I am arguing that these poets have what
Homi Bhabha and others call a “hybrid” identity and therefore undermine and complicate
11
the singular representation of female Somali subjectivities.22 I stress the simultaneous
existence of belonging and unbelonging, which reiterates Hall’s suggestion that displaced
I also situate the performances of these female Somali poets in public culture.24 I
look specifically at oral poetry performances in public culture in order to address how these
texts and voices fall outside of mainstream narratives, reify and/or undermine hegemonic
constructions of Somali womanhood, and reveal the multiplicity of Somali femininities and
subjectivities. As a corollary, the content of the poetry (means) and the context of the
expressions of female desire and agency. In short, my thesis draws attention to how these
Somali women trouble stable notions of identity and place through their ‘doubled’
understanding of gabar xishood leh, a modest girl. Through their hybrid subjectivities and
texts, these poets disrupt dominant discourses and offer the concept of gabar xishood leh as
a site of contestation. The very public nature of these cultural texts speaks to the practice of
‘talking back’ and the centralization of personal narrative.25 The expressive practices by
these poets complicate claims to belonging by subverting and refashioning gabar xishood
22
Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).
23
Anand, “Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position,” South Asian Diaspora 1, no. 2 (2009):
105.
24
For theories of public culture and belonging, see Gayatri Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer
Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
25
bell hooks, Talking Black: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston, MA: South End Press,
1989).
12
leh, thus bringing new insight into the discourse surrounding notions of Somali female
intersectional positionings. On the one hand, as I stated in the beginning of this chapter, I
was socialized in the gabar xishood leh discourse, lending me an insider status. At the same
wary of particular framings that could reduce the complexity of the social life of the Somali
subjective experiences and political acts. While I do not explicitly engage with the topic in
my thesis, I would also like to flag the intricate and complicated ways that overarching
Methodological Framework
pinpoint ruptures in Somali history: the first period, 1899-1944, particularly the latter years,
overlaps with the end of British colonialism; the second period, 1969-1989, was after
independence and signals the creation of the Somali nation-state. These contexts, then,
were periods of instability and sociopolitical upheaval and therefore allow me to think
13
about the construction and reification of gabar xishood leh in relation to broader practices
As noted above, I will be looking at how the discourse of gabar xishood leh is
engaged and subverted by Somali female poets in classical and modern Somali poetry. By
noticing how and where they include sexual agency and xishood in their creative works, I
argue that their specifically hybrid subjectivities are revealed through alternative publics
and agentive acts. Employing the methodologies of textual and semiotic analysis, I look at
classical and modern Somali female poetry to reveal the interplay between complex
performances of gabar xishood leh and affective social codes. I use textual analysis of
poetry for two reasons: to illustrate the importance of oral poetry to Somali culture and
identity, and to highlight the often unspeakable elements in speech that could only be
revealed through poetry. As bell hooks claims: poetry in itself “[i]s the place for the secret
voice, for all that [can] not be directly stated or named, for all that would not be denied
expression. Poetry [i]s privileged speech—simple at times, but never ordinary. The magic
of poetry [i]s transformation; it [i]s words changing shape, meaning, and form.”26
It is important to note here that Somali poetry infiltrated every aspect of social life,
and blurred the boundary between public and private life. In fact, until the official Somali
script was institutionalized in 1972, poetry was archived orally, through the historical,
collective memory of Somali culture wherein certain narratives have been passed down
26
Ibid., 11.
14
inter-generationally.27 The role of poetry therefore was and is instructive in the shaping of
the Somali psyche and cultural imagination. It is also a form of personal expression, a form
laid out in my first chapter. To be brief, theories of diaspora, affect, and belonging will
inform my textual and semiotic analyses of Somali women’s poetry. These theoretical
approaches will allow me to pinpoint moments of textual subversion, silences, and other
patterns that are at play within these complex narratives of gender, sexuality, and modesty.
Theories of public culture will complement this work, permitting me to analyze how the
practice of oral poetry politicizes the themes of modesty, sexuality, and gender norms.
women, and voice, are primarily interview-based and focus on experiential knowledge.29
This is useful, as Somali poetry is orally transmitted and presents a means of political
consciousness of women and reviv[e] women’s history while at the same time stimulating
27
See Said S. Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad
‘Abdille Hasan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) for an understanding of Somali
poetry as historical archives.
28
For further discussion of the public role of Somali poetry, see Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi,
Culture and Customs of Somalia (Westpoint, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001).
29
For interviewing as praxis in Somali female poetry, see Dahabo Hasan et al., “Somalia: Poetry as
Resistance against Colonialism and Patriarchy,” in Subversive Women: Women’s Movements in
Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Saskia Wieringa (London: Zed Books, 1995).
30
Dahabo Hasan et al., “Somalia: Poetry as Resistance against Colonialism and Patriarchy,” 169.
15
analysis.31 These are meaningful studies, but the qualitative approach and the historical
method shy away from what cannot be ‘said’ in the creative output of Somali women,
which I believe contains valuable but understudied epistemological narratives. This is not
to say that interviews are inappropriate, but rather that applying this methodology alone
might foreclose other ways of thinking about gendered formations and subversions in
thus seeks to complement and extend these existing literatures that take up Somali
Literature Review
The literature that analyzes Somali female poetry from Somalia is divisive in how it
takes up women’s creative, social and political participation. On the one hand, there is a
general consensus about the subordination of women’s poetry. Put bluntly, women’s poetic
craft is considered “less than” men’s poetic craft. On the other hand, the connection
between the diminished rank of Somali female poetry and the degree of female public life
is contested. For some, the subordinate position of female poetry correlates with the social
status of Somali women.32 Others, however, claim the lowered status of female poetry is a
31
For the use of historical methodology and historiography in research regarding the political lives
of Somali women, see Safia Aidid, “Haweenku Wa Garab (Women are a Force): Women and the
Somali Nationalist Movement, 1943-1960,” Bildhaan Vol. 10 (2011): 103-124.
32
See Amina H. Adan, “Women and Words: The Role of Women in Somali Oral Literature,”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 16 (1996) for the social positioning
of Somali women.
16
result of how women are depicted by male orators and historians.33 In other words, Somali
female poetry has been deliberately silenced and erased.34 This erasure obscures the active
involvement of Somali women, who took part in a more egalitarian Somali pastoral society.
As a result, the recovery of lost female voices is a chief purpose in the research of Somali
poetry.35 The focus, then, is mostly on women’s poetic genres such as the buraanbur, the
female “prestigious” style. The recurring themes of feminine poetry, whether constructed as
an advisory tale or lament to future generations, included perils such as domestic abuse and
desertion.36 The topics of female sexuality, sexual desire, and sexual agency are under-
theorized in the research, although the association of morality and Somali femininity is
taken up by Lidwein Kapteijns through her term “moral womanhood.”37 For Kapteijns,
“moral womanhood” stems from the need to “preserv[e] …notions of cultural authenticity
“modern” and uniquely “Somali.”38 As such, she situates “moral womanhood” within the
33
Zainab Mohamed Jama, “Silent Voices: The Role of Somali Women’s Poetry in Social and
Political Life,” Oral Tradition 9, no.1 (1994): 186.
34
For further discussion of the subordinate status of female poetry within the Somali poetic
hierarchy, see Dahabo Hasan et al., “Somalia: Poetry as Resistance against Colonialism and
Patriarchy”; see also Zainab Mohamed Jama, “Silent Voices: The Role of Somali Women’s Poetry
in Social and Political Life,” Oral Tradition 9, no. 1 (1994).
35
Lidwien Kapteijns and Maryan Omar Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s world: Women and the
Pastoral Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980 (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Publishing, 1999).
36
Hasan et al., “Somalia: Poetry as Resistance against Colonialism and Patriarchy,” in Subversive
Women: Women’s Movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, 169.
37
Lidwien Kapteiijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs 1960-1990,”
Journal of African History 50 (2009): 101.
38
Ibid., 102, 105.
17
larger tensions of soomaalinimo (Somali personhood) post-independence, which raised
female sexual desire and sexual agency in Somali female poetry. My work also introduces
the notion of hybrid subjectivities, which reveal the intermingling of xishood and sexual
desire, expanding the dominant perspective of gabar xishood leh. My research works with
the volume of collected poetry Women’s Voices in a Man’s World edited by Lidwein
Kapteijns and Marian Omar Ali and the poetry included in the article “Discourse on Moral
primary sources and track how the gabar xishood leh discourse arises in women’s poetry in
colonial and postcolonial settings. Specifically, I read the poems for expressions of Somali
womanhood and the dual expressions of sexual modesty/“good shame” and sexuality. By
looking at classical poets (who were anonymous) and modern poets (Maryan Mursal,
Fadumo Nakruma, Hibo Mohamed, Kinsi Adan, Adar Ahmed, Khadija Hiiraan, and
Fadumo Elmi), I explore the coded emotionality and affective dimensions of hybrid Somali
subjectivities, drawing specific attention to the means and spaces through which complex
performances of gabar xishood leh add to the conceptions of Somali femininities and
sexualities.
39
Ibid., 105.
40
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980; and Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in
Somali Popular Songs 1960-1990.”
18
The poets I examine here, then, are in many ways public figures—their poetry is a
significant part of a longer national story and the political work of poetry is, as noted, part
of the Somali social fabric. Yet the question of Somali femininity, in relation to the public
sphere and public culture, is contested: gabar xishood leh is a construct that is underpinned
discipline women’s participation in the public sphere. It is between modesty and public
culture that I situate Somali female poets and draw attention to their refashioning of the
Chapter Breakdown
hybridity and in-between space, and public culture. Starting off with the construction of
gabar xishood leh, I unpack and contextualize its origins in “tradition.” In doing so, I show
how notions of “cultural authenticity” validate and support certain ideals, such as modesty
important in that it lays the groundwork for affective belonging. Next, I put forth the idea
and belonging to the construct of gabar xishood leh through certain performances. Through
this, I show how certain Somali women, such as the poets whose work I analyze in this
19
signs that lay the conditions for collective belonging and the possibility of unbelonging.
This simultaneous belonging and unbelonging is inherent to hybrid subjectivities (in this
case, the expression of sexual desire and modesty) and the in-between space that arises as a
result of their existence. I conclude with the assertion that public culture, specifically
‘alternative publics’ and the agentive acts of speaking and listening, is a vehicle for the
xishood and counterpublics. Somali female classical poets performing love poetry were
censored and silenced along two trajectories: through the lower status of their poetry and
through the unacceptability of love and/or sexual desire as subject matter, as they are
contrary to the gabar xishood leh narrative. As a result, the subversion of codes of xishood
through what bell hooks calls “coming to voice” and the space of counterpublics—sites that
allow the expression of hybrid discourses—are the chief means by which classical female
poets exert their sexual agency and unhinge the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh.
The focus of Chapter 4 is the nexus of intimate publics and performative listening in
modern Somali female poetry. Invoking Lauren Berlant’s concept of an intimate public
sphere, which involves a shared worldview and affective connections among its members, I
argue that modern Somali female poets express their hybrid subjectivities of xishood and
sexual desire precisely because of their belonging to a female intimate public invested in
the gabar xishood leh narrative. In addition, performative listening, particularly the call and
response dynamic embedded in it, allows for the expression of re-signified codes of
xishood through a hidden message only understood by members of the intimate public.
20
I conclude with the power of hybridity and in-between space, which allow the
gabar xishood leh by rendering ambivalent certain notions and naming conventions. As
such women are considered “impossible” figures within the discourse, this disruption
reveals the limitations of language and hints at the possibility of unbelonging. At the same
time, the covert addition to the meaning of codes of xishood allows this either/or and
neither/nor position to go undetected, allowing the full measure of social belonging to the
gabar xishood leh construct. I end with my aspirations for further research, specifically, my
interest in how xishood, sexual desire, and gabar xishood leh are taken up in diasporic
21
22
Chapter 2
belonging in relation to the notion of gabar xishood leh. I unpack the construct of gabar
xishood leh by paying particular attention to the concepts and codes of xishood, and the
rhetoric of female sexuality implicitly contained within it. I also explore gabar xishood leh
as an affective expression that propels attachment to this gendered category. I focus on the
leh calls into question “traditional” notions of Somali womanhood. These alternative
performances of gabar xishood leh contain subjacent references to female desire within
Somali female expressive practices. Here the spectrum of belonging and unbelonging arises
from the simultaneous existence inside and outside—or the in-between space—of the gabar
xishood leh discourse. As such, I draw on the writings of Sara Ahmed, Homi Bhabha,
Gayatri Gopinath, bell hooks, and Ketu Katrak, among others, as well as theorizations of
In order to analyze belonging in relation to the gabar xishood leh ideal, I begin with
seductive but containing power of “tradition” that forms the basis of gabar xishood leh. I
23
highlight the connection of female sexuality to modesty—a connection that is often
silenced or hidden within the gabar xishood leh narrative. I then theorize xishood as a
positive affect and gabar xishood leh as an affect carrying construction of identity. Put
slightly differently, I argue that xishood and gabar xishood, together, foster or encourage
Various theorists, such as Lidwien Kapteijns and Anu Isotalo, have taken up the
dominant discourse surrounding Somali womanhood. In the work of both theorists, the
running from immediately before the country’s independence in 1960 to the 1980s.41
During this time, tensions arose within the anticolonial and nationalist movements for
independence.42 There were those who strove to stress a communal Somali identity outside
“traditional” and clan formations, and “traditionalists,” who sought to retain Somali
modernity.43 These two views also informed different approaches to Somali womanhood
and femininity. The “traditional” rhetoric, in particular, was concerned with defining what a
“proper” woman should be and upheld Somali femininity as gabar xishood leh and situated
41
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 101.
42
Ibid., 105.
43
Ibid., 105-106.
24
it under the purview of the authority of a woman’s family and clan.44 Invoking a
behaviour and dress in public space (and thus their sexuality and obedience or respect for
The eminent authority of family and clan was expected to define and police
women’s and girls’ behaviour and actions in public and private spaces. These kinds of
disciplinary practices are also prevalent in Anu Isotalo’s research on diasporic Somali girls
in Finland from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Looking at “ideals and practices
concerning gendered moral and socio-spatial behavior,” Isotalo claims that the expected
physical location for a “good” girl was home with her family.46 She also notes that women
deemed inappropriate and invited the perception of “sexual moral indecency.”47 The
connections between private spaces, public spaces, and the gauging of modesty is important
in demonstrating the specific parameters and spaces Somali girls and women navigated in
relation to their gender and sexual identities. Yet the work of Isotalo and others also
overlooks negotiations and resistance of gabar xishood leh within public spaces—which is
Despite the differing time periods and geographies that Kapteijns and Isotalo take
44
Ibid., 109.
45
Ibid., 117.
46
Anu Isotalo, “‘Did You See Her Standing at the Marketplace?’ Gender, Gossip, and Socio-Spatial
Behavior of Somali Girls in Turku, Finland,” in From Mogadishu to Dixon: The Somali Diaspora
in a Global Context, ed. Abdi Kusow and Stephanie R. Bjork (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea, 2007), 181.
47
Ibid., 184.
25
up in their work, they draw attention to the ways morality underpins an ideal Somali
womanhood. They also point to how this morality is rooted in “tradition” and justifies the
rhetoric to label specific behaviours and actions as “Western” and therefore not
“authentically” Somali. I am interested in how these intricacies get effaced under the
auspices of “tradition” and “cultural authenticity,” and how a nostalgia for an idealized
research focuses on: the productions that create the standard to become the standard; and I
ask how this standard lays the conditions for belonging affectively.48 The work of
Kapteijns, Isotalo, and others describes this standard, for Somali women and girls, as
modesty. This gendered standard of modesty sets the stage for me to trace the ubiquitous
and quotidian nature of this idealized Somali womanhood, gabar xishood leh, through
several different periods of history and reveal the affective desire to perform it.
word gabar contained within the phrase gabar xishood leh means maiden in English.
Therefore, regardless of the age of the girl or woman, if she is of a marriageable age but not
modesty. By modesty, I mean cultural, social, and religious norms dictating decency and
48
Miyako Inoue, Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 6.
49
This phrase is commonly used by my relatives and Somali community members.
26
These themes can be thought of in relation to the ways modesty, in connection with
sexuality and xishood, emerges in Arabic lexical history, specifically in the term hishma.50
Hishma is “formed from the trilateral root hashama … [and is] translated by a cluster of
words including modesty, shame, and shyness. In its broadest sense, it means propriety.”51
connotation.52 In citing Richard T. Antoun, Lila Abu-Lughod states that the “…root
mahashim means pudenda. Many Qur’anic references to modesty and chastity are literally
references to the protection of female genitalia.”53 Gideon Kressell echoes the same
sentiment when he traces the linguistic derivation of mahashim to “the triconsonantal root
‘h-sh-m.”54 Through this lineage, he reveals that hishma, and other words with the same
root such as hasham and hshumiyya, have sexual modesty at their core.55
equivalent meaning to its Arabic counterpart and, according to Heather Marie Akou, is a
50
The Swahili word heshima is derived from the Arabic word hishma, meaning respectability: see
Corrie Decker, “Reading, Writing, and Respectability: How Schoolgirls Developed Modern
Literacies in Colonial Zanzibar,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 43, no. 1
(2010).
51
Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California, 1986), 105.
52
Richard T. Antoun, “On the Modesty of Women in Arab Muslim Villages: A Study in the
Accommodation of Traditions,” American Anthropologist 4 (1968), quoted in Abu-Lughod, Veiled
Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 107.
53
Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 107.
54
Gideon M. Kressell, Descent Through Males: An Anthropological Investigation into the Patterns
Underlying Social Hierarchy, Kinship, and Marriage among Former Bedouin in the Ramla-Lod
Area (Israel) (Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992), 201.
55
Ibid., 201.
27
measure of “respectability” in the Somali community.56 I take that corresponding Arabic
word to be hishma not only for its denotative meaning but also for the connotative
association between both words.57 It is this notion of “respectability” that I think heralds the
expansion of meaning from modesty to shame in the concept of xishood. Shame is often
contained within xishood is an inherent quality that points to a positive and “proper” way of
this in mind, I suggest that certain gendered behaviours, acts, and silences dictate the
sociality of gabar xishood leh. These signs or codes also legitimate gabar xishood leh as
disassociated from female sexual desire and agency (something that I unsettle in this
thesis). The discourse of gabar xishood leh, as well, uncovers the link between contained
female sexuality and the parameters of premarital female experience and subjectivity,
56
Heather Marie Akou, “The Politics of Dress in Somali Culture,” Africa Today 59, no. 1 (2012):
104.
57
A further association between the two words hishma and xishood is the phonological similarities,
such as the /!"#/ syllable with its initial voiceless pharyngeal fricative. This vocalization common to
Semitic, Cushitic and Berber branches of the Afro-Asiatic language family tree, which contains the
Arabic and Somali languages, makes me think these words are related and are possibly linguistic
cognates.
58
For a detailed explanation of shame as negative affect, see Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching
Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003).
59
In tracing Arabic words meaning modesty/shame in general, and words derived from the root h-
sh-m in particular, we saw that this group of words is associated with emotion or affect. Abu-
Lughod, whom I mentioned above in regards to sexual modesty, theorizes hasham as emotional
states arising from the combination of feelings of shame in mixed gender spaces and the
performance of deference as a result of these feelings (Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and
Poetry in a Bedouin Society [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1986]).
28
especially as it pertains to the negation of female desire and agency.60 In turning to Somali
“tradition” next, I hope to illustrate how the inverse association between modesty and
unbounded sexuality is at the core of the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh.
Many scholars acknowledge religion as a key social system that informs identity
formation in Somalia.61 However, the question of how “traditional” Somali culture shapes
identities is also at play. Kristin M. Langellier writes that “identity as culture” and “identity
as religion” are separate narratives, while other scholars espouse an established public
the latter viewpoint and it is within this Islamo-Somali framework that I contextualize the
dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh. As such, when I refer to “traditional” Somali
culture, it is with this embedded Islamness. As Kapteijns reiterates: Islam was present
“implicitly because traditional Somali morality was seen as coterminous with Islamic
60
Female desire and agency within girlhood is often silenced, marginalized, deemed ambivalent or
transgressive: see Naomi Wolf, Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood (Toronto:
Random House, 1997); Jessica Willis, “Sexual Subjectivity: A Semiotic Analysis of Girlhood, Sex,
and Sexuality in the Film Juno,” Sexuality & Culture 12, (2008): 240-256; and Rachel Spronk,
Ambiguous Pleasures: Sexuality and Middle Class Self-Perceptions in Nairobi (New York and
Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012). Furthermore, the commonality between all reactions presupposes
an outward sexual expectation of girlhood as ‘pure’, ‘innocent’, and ‘passive.’
61
For discussion of the importance of Islam in Somali identity formation, see Rima Berns-
McGown, Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London and Toronto (Toronto:
University of Toronto, 1999).
62
Lidwien Kapteiijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs 1960-1990,”
Journal of African History 50 (2009): 72-83.
29
morality, and explicitly, as discursive sanctions of Islam and tradition were invoked in
tandem.”63
Although “traditional” Somali culture varies across geographical regions, the shared
specific cultural conventions that it shares with other pastoral nomadic societies.64 Agnatic
kin structures within pastoral nomadic cultures reveal a tribal ideology where specific
gender moral virtues, such as honour for men and modesty for women, are paramount in
acknowledging the significance of patrilineal practices.65 The Somali clan structure thus
privileges paternal kinship as the means of social identification and socialization.66 Male
honour (sharaf) is contingent on the protection of the virtue of their female kin in agnatic
social formations.67 Strictly speaking, then, the emphasis on socially controlled female
threatening to the patrilineal kinship structure. Lila Abu-Lughod outlines how unbound
63
Ibid., 120.
64
For the connections of tribe kinship structures to pastoral culture, see Moneera Al-Ghadeer,
Desert Voices: Bedouin Women’s Poetry in Saudi Arabia (New York: Tauris Academic Studies,
2009); see also Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 1986.
65
For extensive discussion about moral gendered virtues in pastoral communities, see Steven C.
Caton, Peaks of Yemen I Summon: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990); see also Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments:
Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society.
66
Despite the prevalent view that Somali clan formations are inherently patrilineal, Christine Choi
Ahmed reveals certain clans, particularly from the South, were matrilineal in some regard: see
Christine Choi Ahmed, “Finely Etched Chattel: The Invention of a Somali Woman,” in The
Invention of Somalia, ed. Ali Jimale Ahmed (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, Inc., 1995),
183.
67
Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 87-103.
30
[T]he denial of sexuality that is the mark of hasham (modesty) is a symbolic means
of communicating deference to those in the hierarchy who more closely represent
the cultural ideals and the social system itself. This denial is necessary because the
greatest threat to the social system and to the authority of those preferred by this
system is sexuality itself.68
Through an unequivocal correlation between modesty and the dismissal of female sexual
agency, Abu-Lughod reveals how female sexuality undermines and challenges the cultural
societies were necessary to strengthen family and clan ties, the construction of gabar
xishood leh served as the vehicle to restrict female sexuality within prescribed normative
expectations that were deemed beneficial to girls’ and women’s family and clan.70
While the origins of gabar xishood leh lie within “traditional” Somali culture, this is
linked to the ways “tradition” is used in conjunction with cultural authenticity. The
authenticating work of modesty, then, justifies and validates gender norms and generates a
repudiating female sexual desire and agency is a common occurrence. As Ketu H. Katrak
women as “guardians of tradition,” and I would add “mothers of the nation,” work to
68
Ibid., 119. (Parenthesis added).
69
Ibid., 119.
70
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 24.
71
Ketu H. Katrak, Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press 2006), 157.
31
categorize women as asexual beings under the purview of a hegemonic production of
veiled as patriarchy in the Global South. She outlines how this has detrimental
consequences for women and insists that cultural “traditions” buttress patriarchy by
specific lenses, she argues, “exalt traditional culture, however oppressive, particularly for
women (most common during nationalist movements which glorify ‘tradition’ in order to
discourse, other modes and articulations of womanhood are either erased or hidden. I call
Chapter Three by showcasing how performances of gabar xishood leh in classical poetry
certain social norms as “authentic.” Amanda Weidman writes (in relation to authenticating
practices in India) that “authenticity [is] the preserver of…tradition in the face of
of “real” culture, experiential knowledge and alternative modes of gender identification are
72
Ibid., 157.
73
Ibid., 160.
74
Ibid., 160.
75
Amanda J. Weidman, Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern: The Postcolonial Politics of
Music in South India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 5.
32
obscured. Xishood, as the primary signifier of Somali womanhood, authenticates the
dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh. This situates Somali femininity within a
“traditional” terrain and engulfed within the singular narrative of female modesty sans
sexual agency. By rendering the discourse of gabar xishood leh as the only recognized, or
identity nullify the latter’s cultural value. Christine Yano thus writes that “cultural
contemporary… women, who, by this argument, have forgotten the shyness and modesty of
their past.”76
and “authentic” Somali, I propose, is the impetus for social belonging within Somali
womanhood. This underscores how the “nostalgized figures” of gabar xishood leh are
affectively produced and reinforced. I am arguing, then, that some Somali women are
emotionally invested in the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh and as such, are
compelled to perform it. The longing to perform gabar xishood leh, as a means for
subjectivities are messy, ambiguous, affective pulls that result in belonging.77 This premise
is important in looking at the ways female Somali poets negotiate claims of identity and
76
Christine Yano, “Singing the Contentions of Place: Korean Singers of the Heart/Soul of Japan,”
in Performing Gender, Place, and Emotion in Music, ed. Fiona Magowan and Louise Wrazen
(Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2013), 155.
77
Dibyesh Anand, “Diasporic subjectivity as an ethical position,” South Asian Diaspora 1, no. 2 :
104.
33
belonging through their complex performances of gabar xishood leh—hybrid expressions
of sexual desire and xishood—in this thesis. Thus, the seemingly contrarian aspects of their
experience.”79 In this regard, the desire to perform gabar xishood leh—which stems from
the potency of the gabar xishood leh rhetoric as a “culturally authentic” expression of
To consider the nexus of affect, belonging, and attachment to the gabar xishood leh
construct, I explore xishood as an affect that is a combination of sexual modesty and “good
shame.” I then look at gabar xishood leh as an affect-carrying construction using Sara
Ahmed’s figure of the melancholic migrant. I then turn to the question of affectively
Affect has been theorized in many different ways. Clare Hemmings argues that
“affect broadly refers to states of being, rather than to their manifestations or interpretations
as emotions.”80 Affect is, then, an inner state of experience that exists before
78
For general discussions on socialization, attachment, and belonging, see Anton Allahar, “The
Social Construction of Primordial Identities,” in Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and
Ethnicity in Canadian Society, ed. Sean P. Hier and B. Singh Bolaria (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’
Press, 2006), 31-42.
79
Rosemary Overell, Affective Intensities in Extreme Music Scenes: Cases from Australia and
Japan (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 11.
80
Clare Hemmings, “Invoking Affect: Cultural Theory and the Ontological Turn,” Cultural Studies
19, no. 5 (2005): 551.
34
phenomenological consciousness and before the subject translates their inner being into
word “affect,” Brian Massumi uses “intensity” when he claims that “[i]ntensity is embodied
in purely autonomic reactions most directly manifested in the skin—at the surface of the
body, as its interface with things.”81 For Hemmings and Massumi, affect is manifested
corporeally before the occurrence of qualia (“perceptions and sensations ‘in’ or ‘of’ the
mind”).82 Xishood, as “good shame,” is an internalized state that propels forth. As Nader al
Jallad claims, “good shame” is indicative of, first, the intensity of the feeling, and second,
iterate above, I place more emphasis on the understanding of affect as evoking feelings of
attachment and belonging. For that I turn to Sara Ahmed’s model of the sociality of
That does not mean I deny the internal state of xishood, but rather emphasize the
pronounced relationality between the sign (modesty) and affect (attachment to modesty)
through shared codes. This line of inquiry leads me to think about xishood as a category of
81
Brian Massumi, Parable for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2002), 25.
82
Lily Hope Chumley and Nicholas Harkness, “Introduction: QUALIA,” Anthropological Theory
13, no. 1/2 (2013): 4.
83
Al Jallad, “The concept of ‘shame’ in Arabic: bilingual dictionaries and the challenge of defining
culture-based emotions,” Language Design 12 (2010): 39.
84
Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 9.
35
in-betweenness.
happiness in her book The Promise of Happiness. In this text she illustrates how objects
objects contain memories, feelings, and histories, which, in turn, can produce positive
affect.85 As such, it is the context surrounding the object that contributes towards a
particular experience with that object. Over time, that object accumulates positive affect to
the point that the affect itself becomes part of the essence or composition. If the discussion
is extended to bodies (and in this case, constructs of identity as well) there is the view that
bodies, like objects, have an affective catch and release, what Ahmed refers to as
stickiness.86 She argues, “the atmosphere is not simply ‘out there’ before it gets ‘in’: how
we arrive, how we enter this room or that room, will affect what impressions we receive.”87
Hemmings, like Ahmed, asserts that affect is not free and autonomous from
sociality. Even if affect is intensity, she claims, it still exists within a world where it “is
always crosscut with fissures that have a social and political history that signifies
85
Ibid., 25.
86
Ibid., 40.
87
Ibid., 40.
36
otherwise.”88 In other words, due to certain signifiers or histories, affect cannot be claimed
to place all individuals in the same sequence of catch and release of intensities. In fact,
“[s]ome bodies are captured and held by affect’s structured precision. Not only then, is
affect itself not random, nor is the ability to choose to imagine affect otherwise.”89 I suggest
that the construct of gabar xishood leh carries affect through certain bodies and bypasses
others. I illustrate this point with an example: if a man behaves with sexual impropriety in
his dealings with an unmarried girl, he would be rebuked waryaa, xishood, the imperative
form in which waryaa is the masculine interjection. Implicitly contained within this clause
unmarried girl.” In other words, there is sense of moral protection surrounding Somali
females in this context, where even a male’s improper behaviour could be considered
socially contagious. This interaction, however, does not result in the transference of
established above, social context matters in the affective encounter, and so I would place
The “stickiness” of gabar xishood leh then, is contained only amongst and between
women. The catch and release of xishood, however, does not claim all women in the same
way; rather, it is women who have an invested emotional interest in the dominant discourse
of gabar xishood leh. The emphasis of “good shame” in xishood as an affective state that
88
Hemming, “Invoking Affect,” Cultural Studies 19, no. 5 (2005): 558.
89
Ibid., 562.
37
manifests its exteriority in Somali female interactions, evident in the indication and
socialization of Somali girls and women through gabar xishood leh. For example, a girl
emotionally attuned to xishood would not sit with her knees apart in proximity to a group of
all women, due to feelings of xishood, regardless of the location. Related, but differently, if
she was in a public, mixed-gendered space, the act of sitting in such a manner would be
The transmission of xishood is partly due to the attachment of the idea of gabar
xishood leh. As I stated earlier, the construction of gabar xishood leh is rooted in Somali
suggest this proposition lends itself to a “legitimated belonging,” which propels the
the practice of belonging to gabar xishood leh entails a linguistic and theatrical engagement
field of signification. The insistence on gabar xishood leh as a dominant discourse and an
“traditional” constructions of gabar xishood leh cannot say—social drama allows affect to
evince “excess.” While I have been hinting that there is more to performances of gabar
90
‘Ayb alludes to exhibitions of behaviours and actions that transgress socio-moral parameters.
Dina Georgis, in regards to ‘ayb (bad shame) as a socio-moral barometer, states: “The anxieties
around violating social norms are often less attributable to the behaviour being haraam (a sin or
religiously forbidden) as to the fear that it will lead to kalaam al-naas (what people will say) and
therefore public reckoning.” See: Dina Georgis, “Thinking Past Pride: Queer Arab Shame in Bareed
Mista3jil,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 2 (2013): 243.
38
xishood leh than “tradition,” the link between affect and “tradition” is undeniable. Richard
Ostrofsky expounds on the intricate connection between affect and social customs by
things—for example…on the compatibility of that affect with prior scripts.”91 Extending
Ostrofsky’s claims to the Somali context, we can see how scripts—socio-sexual codes of
morality and respectability—allow and valorize gabar xishood leh performances through
the attachment of xishood to Somali womanhood. Their conjoined nature is, thus, an added
Positive affect in the form of xishood gets distributed depending on the frequency of
the performance of gabar xishood leh. Put differently, the intransient association between
sign and affect is reinforced as “[s]igns increase in affective value as an effect of the
movement between signs: the more signs circulate, the more affective they become.”92 In
Ahmed’s research, she works with the figure of the melancholic migrant and illustrates how
the attachment to suffering interpellates and solidifies the migrant’s location as Other to an
“the repetition of the narrative of injury which causes injury” to migrants.94 It is the
91
Richard Ostrofsky, “Affect Theory, Shame and the Logic of Personality,” Sec Thoughts (2003):
4; http://www.secthoughts.com/Misc%20Essays/Shame%20and%20Personality.pdf.
92
Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2012), 45.
93
Ibid., 45.
94
Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness, 143.
39
state, the premise of gabar xishood leh gains momentum through recurrent performances.
The attachment to gabar xishood leh—as the noted sign of Somali womanhood—escalates
the more it is performed. The repetition of the performance adds to its emotive significance,
gender expectations and ideals. Feelings of attachment and belonging to the construct of
gabar xishood leh, along with the compulsion to perform, then, are partly due to its
established status as the symbol of a good, respectable, modest Somali womanhood that is
Affect, Ahmed affirms, not only proceeds laterally between signs, bodies, and
figures but also “forwards and backwards” since “repression always leaves its trace in the
Ahmed’s point about the ‘absent presence’ is particularly salient in regards to my thinking
of female sexual desire in the gabar xishood leh construct. While the dominant discourse
as such because I think female desire and agency, as the unspoken spectre, haunts the
discussion of gabar xishood leh. As Avery Gordon explains, “…haunting describes how
that which appears to be not there is often a seething presence, acting on and often
meddling with taken-for-granted realities.”96 In other words, I argue that despite the
silencing of female sexual desire and the denial of its existence within the gabar xishood
95
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 45.
96
Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 1997), 8.
40
leh paradigm, it underpins female modesty. As such, what “sticks”—xishood—contains
elements of desire.
That the past is influential in current everyday life accentuates the affective desire to
perform gabar xishood leh despite differing spatiotemporal localities. However, I think it is
worth recalling here Katrak’s and Yano’s separate assertions that “tradition” as the
on the political agendas of the patriarchal nation. That is to say, by laying claim to a
particular “past,” it conjures up and validates certain narratives as historically accurate and
“authentic,” through this lens and not others. In either case, despite nuanced differences in
place and time, what is pressing is how varying interpretations rest on one important
overarching frameworks of gender, nation, and belonging.97 Strictly speaking, then, the
efficacy of the gabar xishood leh discourse in serving as the only model of Somali
that circulates xishood through the use of certain recognizable markers that establish the
behaviours. In short, actions, dress, and linguistic pauses or silences index xishood.
97
Massumi, Parable for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, 72.
41
“Islamic” manner (wearing guntiino, which covers the whole body, or not wearing
ornaments) are examples of how modesty is gauged. Within the Somali diaspora, the
jilbaab—the Somali equivalent of the burqa—is prized among Somali women.98 As well,
gestural acts such as “downcast eyes, humble but formal posture and restraint in eating,
smoking, talking, laughing, and joking” are often cited as the epitome of Islamic feminine
behaviour.99 Furthermore, acts such as shy and polite behaviour, not speaking a lot, and
mark signs of xishood in Somali girls and women. These socially recognizable signs, codes,
and acts index xishood and also reference the suppression of female sexual desire that is
assumed to accompany xishood behaviour. By these acts, as Isotalo states, a Somali girl or
woman “expresses her modesty and premarital abstinence from sexual relations.”100 The
shyness, and adornment decisions; it is also evident in silence, quietness, and minimized
talking.
These expressions are contained within specific motifs—for instance, marriage and
other religiously and culturally sanctified customs and traditions—which I refer to as codes
98
Berns-McGown, Muslims in the Diaspora: The Somali Communities of London and Toronto,
224.
99
Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 108.
100
Isotalo, “‘Did You See Her Standing at the Marketplace?’ Gender, Gossip, and Socio-Spatial
Behavior of Somali Girls in Turku, Finland,” in From Mogadishu to Dixon: The Somali Diaspora
in a Global Context, 184.
42
habit (which includes belief: habituated meaning).”101 While I am in agreement with
Massumi about social referents becoming internalized (recall here Ahmed’s framework of
prosaic. I am hesitant to claim the contextual overtones implied by the word “modeling” as
the only stimulus. By claiming the performances of codes as imitation, Massumi insinuates
ideology with its insistence of embalming codes of xishood within “tradition.” In other
words, since “traditional” culture serves as a marker of belonging within the Somali social
imagination, some codes are legitimated as “authentic.” In a circuitous manner, then, the
codes, in other words, are passed down as tradition. The acts, dress codes, and silences get
interiority—an internal state—and external influences are at work in shaping the conditions
of practicing codes. The framework of practicing codes as well the codes themselves form
the basis of a collective understanding of the gabar xishood leh construct, resulting in
affective belonging and attachment. This is important, and in Chapters Three and Four I
101
Massumi, Parable for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation, 82.
102
I am aware that the work of Brian Massumi in regards to affect is not about intentionality or
agency, but rather the ways that social codes become entrenched in the social psyche. That is to say,
it is not about overt subversion but rather internalization. So while I do argue that many aspects of
“performing” gabar xishood leh are involuntary, due to continual imitation, I am interested in overt
and deliberate acts of subversion.
43
will show how the poets I am looking at purposely use these codes in their complex
Nonetheless, shared codes are imperative in enunciating the parameters of social belonging,
and more importantly indicating who has the legitimate right to claim authenticity.
interested in how the unifying factor of xishood conjures feelings of attachment and
belonging to the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh, I suspect that codes that signal
the externalization of xishood, such as social acts, dress, and linguistic pauses, as well as
Homi Bhabha draws attention to how codes need to be recognized within a social
always formed in relation to others.”105 Bhabha draws attention to what he refers to as the
“right to narrate,” which involves the acceptance of one’s response by others—a process
No name is yours until you speak of it; somebody returns your call and
suddenly, the circuit of signs, gestures, gesticulations is established and you
enter the territory of the right to narrate.106
103
Overell, Affective Intensities in Extreme Music Scenes: Cases from Australia and Japan, 11.
104
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, xxv.
105
Nikos Papastergiadis, Dialogues in the Diasporas: Essays and Conversations on Cultural
Identity (New York: Rivers Oram Press, 1998), 30.
106
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, xxv.
44
Narrating the self and identity is dependent on the recognition of codes, which propels one
forward into a framework of affective belonging. The response is not only concomitant
with the acknowledgement of “legitimate belonging” to the gabar xishood leh paradigm
but, according to Bhabha, is the impetus for subjective “voice.” If the process of coming to
belong enables “voice,” how do voices outside dominant discourses negotiate these codes
and create spaces of self-expression? Another way of asking this is: if the porousness of
signification—a signification that might not bode well for marginalized communities and
voices—how can we re-conceptualize the way we think about being and belonging,
keeping in mind Bhabha’s query of social relationality? With this in mind, I turn to the
So far, I have shown how performing gabar xishood leh informs the practice of
codes of modesty, that underwrite Somali womanhood. The poets I am looking at in the
following chapters perform codes of xishood because, I argue, they are attached to this
construct of feminine modesty. At the same time, they express sexual desire and exhibit
sexual agency through their expressive practices. Performing codes stemming from xishood
performances that rework gabar xishood leh. As I noted earlier, any semblance of female
45
sexual desire is constructed as the antithesis of xishood. As a result, contained within these
Pettersson sheds some light on the messiness surrounding social inclusion when he claims
that “markers of belonging in one dimension, at the same time may generate markers of
gabar xishood leh ideal uncovers the performative nature of identity and allows some
Somali female poets to reposition themselves as both unique individuals and as members of
encompass indicators of xishood as “good shame” and sexual modesty, and projections of
female sexual desire and agency. In other words, the poets I study use codes of xishood as a
medium to publicly engage with stalwart preconceptions of female sexuality and Somali
womanhood. The advantage of using these codes is that because they are recognizable, they
are read through a particular lens that deems them, seemingly, ineffectual within the
dominant discourse. However, as Foucault notes, underneath the rhetoric runs another
normative scripts of modesty. The importance of these codes, then, lies in divulging the
107
Tove Pettersson, “Belonging and Unbelonging in Encounters Between Young Males and Police
Officers: The Use of Masculinity and Ethnicity/Race,” Critical Criminology 21, no. 4 (2013): 417.
108
Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Sciences, 45.
46
meanings of cultural practices] for [women’s] ‘own interests and agendas’”—pinpoints the
negotiation and resistance of women which might not be readily apparent at first glance.109
Opening up the multiple meanings of gabar xishood leh codings, by tracking how poets
subvert gender expectations in their performances, not only reveals alternative narratives
but also unhinges the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh by imploding the imagined
hybridity according to Homi Bhabha, and it is this concept I use to reframe complex Somali
female performances.110
I turn to thinking about belonging and unbelonging through the work of Homi
Bhabha and his notion of cultural hybridity, which describes the construction of culture and
identity within a colonial setting. Hybridity is the process where the colonial governing
body utilizes a singular and Universalist framework though which the colonized (the Other)
is measured and disciplined.111 The end result is a hybrid identity consisting of the
colonizer’s and colonized’s culture, which challenges the validity of any essentialist
postcolonial cultural setting, I highlight hybrid Somali female subjectivities that emerge
109
Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2004), 6.
110
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 35.
111
Papastergiadis, “Tracing Hybridity in Theory,” in Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural
Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, 21.
47
Cultural hybridity with its insistence of multiplicity problematizes hegemonic
holes in the constructed landscape. This definition of difference posits Somali women as
complex and antagonistic Others—which means their claims to the collective identity are
contested. The term “antagonistic” is, though, something I am trying to dispel within the
nexus of Somali gendered politics and collective belonging. I name it because I want to
think through how belonging is different but not in opposition to the dominant order, which
I hope will expand the meaning of gabar xishood leh. As a mixture of difference and
similarities, hybridity forms a liminal or in-between space. Bhabha refers to this as a third
space. Hybridity, then, consists of dominant and alternative performances, and unhinges the
fixity of meaning that is tied to the dominant discourse.112 Third space challenges the
expectations; in disrupting dominant culture, third space also opens up a space for the
possibility of other performances.113 The third space of hybridity and ambivalence, in turn,
subverts and renegotiates hegemonic systems and opens up new possibilities through
multilayered performances. In the following chapters, I use the concepts of hybridity and
third space to theorize about power and resistance within a colonial and postcolonial
cultural setting. More specifically, I underscore the ways hybridity and third space
illuminate the complexities of Somali female subjectivities and through that, draw attention
112
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 35.
113
Ibid., 53.
48
to the ways gabar xishood leh, and therefore Somali female identity and belonging, are
contested.
Similar to Bhabha’s theorization of third space is the notion of barzakh. Like third
Arabic word barzakh meant the liminal space between the material and supernatural
spheres where the soul lingers after death but before resurrection on Yawm al-Qiyamah (the
Day of Judgment).115 However, medieval Sufis expanded the definition to include the
A barzakh is something that separates two things while never going to one side, as
for example the line that separates shadow from sunlight…. There is nothing in
existence but barzakhs, since a barzakh is the arrangement of one thing between
two things…and existence has no edges.116
difference, exemplified succinctly by Gloria Anzaldúa, whose epigraph began this thesis.
Anzaldúa writes that “I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean/ where the two overlap/
a gentle coming together/ at the other times and places a violent crash,” and in this stresses
114
William C. Chittick, The Self-Disclosures of God: Principles of Ibn al-Arabi’s Cosmology,
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), xxxiii.
115
Ibid., xxxiii.
116
Ibn Al-‘Arabi, Al-futuhat al-makkiyya, translated and cited by W. C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of
Knowledge: Ibn al-‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of the Imagination (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1989), 124, quoted in Stefania Pandolfo, Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from a Moroccan
Space of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 1.
49
the doubleness that underwrites identity formation.117 Anzaldúa’s ontological location is
simultaneously “gentle” and “violent,” and her commentary instantiates the fluidity in
boundaries and shifting identity formations. Differently put, because Anzaldúa’s location is
also neither completely “gentle” nor “violent,” its intermediary position creates a
productive tension that highlights the multiple imaginings of belonging. Nira Yuval-Davis
thus writes that as “identities and belonging/s become important dimensions of people’s
can also become more closely intertwined empirically.”118 What I find intriguing about
Yuval-Davis’s assertion is the concomitant alignment between modes of being and notions
of belonging. Within the Somali context, this allows me to think through how women
navigate the gabar xishood leh ideal in relation to female sexual desire and how the poets in
The tension arising from barzakh is taken up in African postcolonial thought where
In other words, it is “a hiatus which destabilizes the assignment of places and parts, which
[then] displaces the categories of classical and colonial reason and opens up a heterological
space….”120 Analogous to the epistemic disruption that accompanies the third space,
barzazh’s ability to unsettle tacit social constructions reveals its distinctive power: mapping
117
Anzaldúa, Borderland/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 23.
118
Nira Yuval-Davis, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations (London: SAGE
Publications Inc., 2011), 18.
119
Pandolfo, Impasse of the Angels: Scenes from a Moroccan Space of Memory, 5.
120
Ibid., 5.
50
out the loci of the “unnamable.” Bhabha, in reference to characters in V.S. Naipaul’s
novels, hints at this elusive element. He states: “Naipaul’s people are vernacular
cosmopolitans of a kind, moving in-between cultural traditions, and revealing hybrid forms
of life and art that do not have a prior existence within the discrete world of any single
showcasing the parameters linked with the act of naming, chiefly its existence within
normative social discourses, something that Miyako Inoue also implies. Inoue illustrates
this ineffable quality of the “unnamable” through the actions of her interlocutor Yoshida-
san, who simultaneously defies and periphrastically recognizes the association of women’s
This elusiveness accounts for the fact that [Yoshida-san] speaks from a position
that the discourse fails to name. She does not use women’s language in an overt
sense. Yet she does not speak against women’s language, or outside its regime,
either…. Her strategy, and the semiotic position that it creates as “the middle”,
ambiguously circumvents all the possible positions and names that the
discourse designates as external, oppositional, or deviant.122
Inoue makes a clear distinction between a lack of existence and the unwillingness of the
discourse to recognize certain subject positions. What is at stake here is the effacing of
certain figures, which as I stated earlier expose lacunae in the collective identity. Gayatri
121
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, xiii (emphasis added).
122
Inoue, Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan, 250 (emphasis in the
original).
51
dominant social codes and the social psyche.123 José Esteban Muñoz similarly alludes to a
allow me to analyze not only how Somali women expressing sexual desire and exercising
sexual agency are outside the intelligible gabar xishood leh paradigm, but also how women
engaging with female sexuality and sexual modesty and “good shame” are actually
While the theorists noted above think through the issues surrounding “impossible”
and “unnamable” figures in divergent ways, they all pinpoint the authority of dominant
discourses and their seeming monopoly in labeling and legitimating social mores. Yet as I
have also been trying to underscore, something exists in-between—not strictly outside or
inside the discourse—that is hybrid. In the upcoming chapters I ask: how do Somali poets
through their hybrid subjectivities “name” their ontological locations, if their very positions
Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods suggest that “places, experiences, histories,
and people that ‘no one knows’ do exist, within our present geographic order.”125 With the
123
Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, 15-16.
124
José Esteban Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 31.
125
Katherine McKittrick and Clyde Woods, “No One Knows the Mysteries at the Bottom of the
52
above discussion in mind, I conclude this argument by illuminating how “impossible”
figures, those working within and refashioning gendered scripts of modernity, inhabit
space. Dwelling in in-between spaces renders some invisible to the dominant discourse, so I
want to address how Somali poets express their agency and practice belonging. I want to
echo Katherine McKittrick’s and Clyde Woods’ reminder that “…we need to consider how
the unknowable figures into the production of space,” and also emphasize the urgency of
examining the ways unknowable, “unnamable” and “impossible” subject positions play out
Gayatri Gopinath’s research on public cultures. This will highlight how silenced and
displaced women perform through and in public cultures and, consequently, unsettle
hegemonic notions about gender that are upheld by “tradition,” the nation-state, and social
mores. By public culture, I refer to cultural expressions and performances that are
recognizable to an organized group of people with a common identity. At the same time,
public culture is an accepted zone where “competing notions of community, belonging, and
authenticity are brought into stark relief.”127 As I noted in my introduction, Somali public
culture lauds poetry as a marker of Somali identity; poetry is closely aligned with Somali
public life. In some ways, Somali public culture and the Somali public sphere are
interchangeable, as both sites shape who can participate politically and where. As I will
Ocean,” in Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, ed. Katherine McKittrick and Clyde
Woods (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007), 4. (Original emphasis.)
126
Ibid., 4.
127
Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, 21.
53
show in the following chapters, women’s poetry was considered socio-culturally inferior to
men’s poetry within the public realm. As such, the general constraints placed on women’s
expressive practices, in addition to the silencing of female sexuality within the gabar
xishood leh construction, demonstrate a twofold binding for the Somali poets I am
studying. Therefore, contained within the analysis of Somali “alternative publics” in this
thesis is a tinge of resistance—as a reader of the poetry, I am also challenging the norms of
the Somali public sphere and proclaiming Bhabha’s “right to narrate” and bell hooks’
“talking back,” along with performative listening, as ways to uncover silences and
unnamable narratives.
Globalization and Diaspora,” Gopinath argues that the “‘invisibility’ of other subjectivities
and other forms of cultural production [can] result [in] the misrecognition…of new
mappings of space, race, gender and sexuality.”128 It is the performance and remapping of
interested in exploring.129 I propose the Somali female poets I am reading here portray their
intimate publics in Chapter Four. “Alternative publics” contain elements of Somali public
cultures through the use of poetry. At the same time, the refusal to conform to a singular
128
Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, 47.
129
Ibid., 58.
54
codes and the use of agentive acts such speaking and listening, is suggestive of “alternative
publics.” These spaces of performances and agentive acts are, in my opinion, indispensable
The “in-between” cultural and gendered spaces of belonging, as well as the spaces
of cultural production and poetry, are understood alongside the politics of “talking back”
and performative listening.130 Not only does performing hybrid subjectivities disrupt
hegemonic narratives, it creates a space where self-representation and the authorial voice
are revealed.131 Through the act of telling, “[a] woman ‘brings her story into the
story’;…[and] free[s] herself from speech enslaved to mastery,…”132 The politics of voice
as well as the closely aligned politics of listening are particularly salient in the
rightly claimed: “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other
people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.”133 Performative listening also allows the means
130
The phrase ‘talking back’ is attributed to bell hooks; see hooks, Talking Black: Thinking
Feminist, Thinking Black.
131
On varying theories on women of colour and authorial voice, see hooks, Talking Black: Thinking
Feminist, Thinking Black; see also Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley:
Crossing Press, 1984); also see Trinh T. Minh-Ha, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation,
Gender, and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991).
132
Minh-Ha, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics, 131.
133
Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 137.
134
Chris McRae, “Listening to a Brick: Hearing Location Performatively,” Text and Performance
Quarterly 32 no. 4 (2012): 336.
55
is to say, performative listening reinforces the association between the speaker and listener
Looking at the acts of speaking and listening, in the next two chapters I trace the
complex ways that Somali female poets express their hybrid subjectivities in “alternative
publics” and reveal different forms of engagements with and conditions of social belonging
56
57
Chapter 3
with its patriarchal roots, is an authenticating practice in which modesty acts as a gendered
disciplining narrative. “Tradition” and modesty, then, authenticate the figure of the asexual
woman—whom other women are measured against.135 Within the Somali context, the term
gabar xishood leh indexes the enactment of sexual modesty and “good shame” as gendered
identifiers that also diminish or hide expressions of female sexuality. Put slightly
differently, the asexual female ideal within the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh
stems from the erasure of female sexual desire and agency by touting modesty as normative
stone, I will explore how female poets utilize localized customs (social codes of xishood) as
a means to achieve a modicum of social control and agency and as a means for self-
135
Katrak, Politics of the Female Body: Postcolonial Women Writers of the Third World, 157.
136
Others have done similar work, for example, Uma Narayan, “The Project of Feminist
Epistemology: Perspectives from a Nonwestern Feminist,” in The Feminist Standpoint Theory
Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies, ed. Sandra G. Harding (New York: Routledge,
2004) and Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject.
58
Codes of xishood as a symbolic marker of gabar xishood leh manifest themselves
along two trajectories within the female Somali poets of classical poetry. First, xishood
because of its acceptance with the larger community, such codes resist a single narrative of
gabar xishood leh. As such, codes of xishood serve a dual purpose: they reaffirm the
attachment to the gabar xishood leh ideal and advance its expansion to include expressions
of sexual desire in poetry. Using Sara Ahmed’s lens, in which affect is discursively
reiterated as a model of “outside in,” we can see a direct correlation between the sign
(modesty) and affect (attachment to modesty) in social codes.137 The use of codes of
xishood through speaking is, I suggest, an agentive act—one that allows the expression of
sexual desire and expands the meaning of gabar xishood leh. As I mentioned before, there
is an advantage in using these codes, as they are recognizable signifiers; at the same time,
due to their familiarity, they allow the undetected expression of sexual desire. For this
womanhood. As I stated earlier, the ‘silencing’ of female sexual desire within the gabar
xishood leh paradigm dictates a prominent display of sexual modesty/‘good shame’ as the
totality of Somali female expression. To expand on the subtle defiance of expressing sexual
137
Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 9.
59
desire, I turn to bell hooks to illustrate the inaudible presence of agentive functions through
In her concept of “coming to voice,” bell hooks highlights the obligation of silenced
and marginalized social groups to find the means and the spaces to exercise their right to
speak publicly.138 Nancy Fraser also proposes that political “participation means being able
to speak ‘in one's own voice,’ thereby simultaneously constructing and expressing one’s
cultural identity through idiom and style.”139 Enclosed within the politics of “voice” in the
public sphere, then, is the ability and impetus to speak as an agentive act and also the
establishment of an “authentic” voice, which Fraser alludes to in her phrase “in one’s own
voice.” That “coming to voice” relies on the presupposition of individual authenticity being
if “coming to voice,” as a political act, must be acknowledged in order to gain traction, how
do those on the periphery overcome this hindrance? One possible answer is Homi Bhabha’s
assertion of the “right to narrate,” meaning that one should have the right to construct one’s
While the use of codes of xishood was effective in propelling women’s voices in
classical Somali poetry, there still were societal constraints due to the positioning of female
poetry within Somali public culture. The censorship of Somali girls and women in classical
poetry is three-fold: through the restriction of content and means of poetic transmission;
138
hooks, Talking Black: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black, 12.
139
Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually
Existing Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/26 (1990): 69.
140
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, xxv.
60
and in the semi-public spaces of performances. As stated above, the public performance of
female sexuality alienated women from the gabar xishood leh construct; however, this
limitation manifested itself principally within the domain of Somali classical poetry.
Female poetry, overall, was deemed inferior to male poetry in Somali classical expressive
practices. Further contained within female poetry was a supplementary difference where
women who spoke about sexuality were derided, reinforcing the implicit claim that ‘proper’
Somali women were modest. As such, the spaces for female performances, which were
already finite, dwindled considerably with this supposed impediment. This multiple
silencing of Somali female poets in classical poetry is the main reason I consider them as
Othered. It is also serves the necessity of having counterpublics through which to theorize
performance that do not alienate diverse voices, or, to put it slightly differently, on spaces
ongoing space of encounter for discourse.”141 Far from being apolitical, however, the
in particular discourses of gender, race, and sexuality.”142 Within the time period of
classical Somali poetry, both the public sphere and public culture were synonymous in
141
Michael Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics,” Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 62.
142
Gopinath, Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures, 17.
61
dictating the perimeter of acceptable subject matters and locations.143 As elites (a
significant fraction of male poets) drew the parameters of legitimate forms of classical
poetry, the obstruction of female poetry, particularly the poets I am looking at in this
chapter, led to the necessity of forming alternative publics that allowed the flourishing of
I argue that classical Somali female poets do form women-only spaces. However, I
also suggest that counterpublics challenge the dominant discourse; Somali female classical
poets, with their hybrid subjectivities and the use of recognizable codes to express sexual
desire, disrupt the singular conception of the gabar xishood leh narrative. Recalling Gayatri
whose hybrid subjectivities simultaneously engage with female sexual desire and
xishood leh discourse, challenges us to expand this limited vocabulary and parse out the
different ways female poets in classical Somali poetry exert their agency and perform their
subjectivities through the nexus of the politics of voice, speaking through codes, and
counterpublics.
143
Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of Sayyid Mahammad ‘Abdille Hasan,
43.
62
collectivity that is streamed out of the public sphere and denied a political “voice.”144
Somali female poets within the classical period were systemically denied a voice through
the subjugation of female poetry and possible ostracization for deviating from the typical
consider them as subordinate subjects, and it is these strict conditions that they were
resisting. In following this route, I look at first the social standing of female poets within
classical poetry, following with the distinctions of acceptable topics within the gabar
xishood leh rhetoric and between sexual desire and sexual awareness, before ending with
In B.W. Andrzejewski’s classification of Somali poetic periods, the Era of Fire and
Embers (1899-1944), which I consider the golden age of classical poetry, coincided with
the advent of British imperialism and ended with the first attempt at Somali nationalism.145
During that historical moment, the most renowned Somali poet, Sayyid Mohammed
Abdulle Xassan, led and mobilized anti-colonialist resistance movements partly through the
144
Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing
Democracy,” Social Text, no. 25/26 (1990): 69.
145
B.W. Andrzejewski, “Somali Literature,” in Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical
Issues and Sample Surveys, ed. B.W. Andrzejewski et al. (Cambridge: University of Cambridge
Press, 1985), 339, 347. Also see Said S. Samatar, Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism: The Case of
Sayid Mahammed ‘Abdille Hasan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
63
use of poetry.146 As a foundational text, Xassan’s poetry serves to prop up a particular ideal
of Somali expressive practices and sets the tone for the parameters of the maanso-goleed
(“prestigious”) category, of which classical poetic genres such as the gabay, geeraar, and
jiifto are considered the most prominent.147 The poetic content of the “prestigious” category
was saturated with “serious” topics, often those pertaining to socio-political, nationalistic,
such as the guux and the bittikoober often contained what was considered “frivolous”
In addition to the content, the social position of the poet was also an indicator of the
poetic category. As older, married men were considered the quintessential poets, they were
often the only ones allowed to perform prestigious genres in classical poetry. Younger,
single poets by default were on the lowest echelons of the poetic hierarchy.150 As a result,
since the younger crowd often performed non-prestigious poetry, with its seemingly trivial
subject matter, it was dismissed as the realm of young and inexperienced poets.151 What is
not clear is whether the disdain of non-prestigious poetry was due to the social position of
the poet or the content of the poetry. I suspect, though, that it was a mixture of both criteria.
146
Martin Orwin, “Somali Poetry” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed.
Roland Greene et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 1313.
147
B.W. Andrzejewski and I.M. Lewis, Somali Poetry: An Introduction (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1964), 15.
148
Abdullahi, Culture and Customs of Somalia, 75.
149
Andrzejewski and Lewis, Somali Poetry: An Introduction, 17.
150
Ibid., 17.
151
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 20.
64
What is transparent, however, is the differing treatment of male and female poets even
poetry, it was perceived more importantly as a means of gaining experience to perform the
However, this same consideration was not extended to young women. While some
eventually progressed from non-prestigious poetry to the buraanbur, the female prestigious
style, young women were not encouraged to evolved poetically to the same degree as
men.153 As such, what is illuminated by the dichotomous split in the treatment of male and
Aside from non-prestigious poetry, the subordinate position of female poets and
referencing prestigious female poetry, Zainab Mohamed Jama’s “Silent Voices: The Role
152
Ibid., 20.
153
It is debatable whether the buraanbur is considered a prestigious form of poetry or not, as some
scholars declare it is and others do not. However, scholars are in agreement that the buraanbur
would be considered lower in status compared to male prestigious poetry: see Dahabo Hasan et al.,
“Somalia: Poetry as Resistance against Colonialism and Patriarchy,” in Subversive Women:
Women’s Movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, ed. Saskia Wieringa
(London: Zed Books, 1995); Amina H. Adan, “Women and Words: The Role of Women in Somali
Oral Literature,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 16 (1996).
However, I am including the buraanbur in the non-prestigious category in this thesis as the issue is
with the subject-matter. To be more precise, the content of ‘love’, deemed a superficial and trivial
topic, placed the poetry in the non-prestigious category.
154
Despite the subordinate status of Somali female poetry, Somali women have resisted and
challenged this label in a myriad ways, see Dahabo Hasan et al., “Somalia: Poetry as Resistance
against Colonialism and Patriarchy,” in Subversive Women: Women’s Movements in Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the Caribbean; Safia Aidid, “Haweenku Wa Garab (Women are a Force):
Women and the Somali Nationalist Movement, 1943-1960,” Bildhaan Vol. 10.
65
of Somali Women’s Poetry in Social and Political Life” illustrates how Somali women’s
poetry was erased through several methods. In addition to the poetic hierarchy I mentioned
above where female poetry was on a lower rung than male poetry, Jama’s preoccupation is
primarily how the distribution of poetry provides evidence of the inferior status of female
poetry.
During the Era of Fire and Embers (the golden age of classical poetry), there were
specific means for publicizing and disseminating poetry: memorization and recitation.155
While this propagated male prestigious poetry, it hindered women’s poetry in two ways.
First, due to limitations enforced by a sexually segregated society, the roles of memorizer
and reciter were male. As a result, other than through female members of their family, men
were not privy to or able to access female poetry.156 This limited the spread of female
poetry through the general population. Second, male orators themselves “view[ed] the act
of memorizing poetry by women as demeaning and insulting.”157 This latter point is more
telling of the prevailing attitude towards women’s poetry—in that it is situated in a position
lacking prominence.
After the introduction of the written script in 1972, classical oral poetry was
documented as part of the effort to preserve the Somali cultural heritage.158 However, the
emphasis was again on male poetry and female poetry was sequestered, except for what
155
Zainab Mohamed Jama, “Silent Voices: The Role of Somali Women’s Poetry in Social and
Political Life,” Oral Tradition 9, no. 1 (1994): 186.
156
Ibid., 192.
157
Ibid., 186.
158
Ibid., 187.
66
was considered “acceptable” poetry.159 The only female poetry collected, according to
Jama, was on “subjects associated with what [were] seen as female roles…[such as] work
poetry…and children’s lullabies.”160 These decisions to diminish female poetry’s value and
importance, and selectively choose some types of poetry over others pinpoint the double
silencing of female poetry. Both these measures serve to undermine female poetry, and I
would argue they are intrinsically linked in mandating the production of an ideal Somali
The acceptability of certain types of female poetry depended on the relative stance
regarding gender relations in the Somali social imaginary. In addition to the tolerance of
specific female poetic genres, poems’ subject matter was also scrutinized. Since the
modesty/“good shame” which resulted in the demarcation of female sexual desire and
sexual agency, this narrative, I claim, dictated the respectability of poetic topics. As such,
non-prestigious poetry, with its emphasis on love, was considered suspect in relation to this
The theme of love in non-prestigious poetry, while ubiquitous, was ambiguous in its
meaning. Contained within the poems, however, are aspects that hint at its gendered
themes, depicted differently in male and female poetry. For example, men’s performances
159
Ibid., 187.
160
Ibid., 187.
67
of love were explicitly “irreverent…funny…[and] obscene, clearly referencing [physical
manifestations of] sexual desire.”161 Women’s, on the other hand, were amorphously
constructed around the fulfillment of love and marriage.162 While male expressions were
obvious indicators of physical love, I argue that the love mentioned in ‘non-prestigious’
female poetry equates to sexual desire for two reasons: first, female sexual desire became
constructed outside the confines of marriage within the gabar xishood leh narrative, and
second, as a result, any expression of female sexual desire produced a visceral, reactionary
force.
female sexual desire was considered antithetical in nature. This adamant distancing of
sexual desire/love outside the confines of marriage becomes engulfed in the gabar xishood
leh narrative. Fatima Mernissi alludes to something similar in the discursive inscription of
“promiscuous sexuality” on the Arab female body in pre-Islamic literature, heightening the
fear of a hypersexual and non-familial-oriented sexuality.163 That is not to say that there is a
denial of female sexuality within marriage; rather, the rhetoric surrounding Somali
“traditional” female sexuality made a distinction between sexual desire and sexual
161
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 27.
162
Ibid., 29.
163
Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society (London: Al Saqi
Books, 1975), 166, quoted by Myra Macdonald, “Muslim Women and the Veil: Problems of image
and voice in media representations,” Feminist Media Studies 6, no. 1 (2006): 13.
68
awareness.164 I propose that sexuality leading to marriage—sexual awareness—was
celebrated precisely because it resulted in marriage in a manner that female sexual desire
did not.
pastoral British Somaliland in the early twentieth century.165 On the one hand, girls were
advantageous) and therefore were expected to have some semblance of sexual awareness.166
On the other hand, sexual knowledge was frowned upon, as chastity was a prized attribute
in a successful bride.167 One particular Somali expression exemplifies this through the
warning to men of the danger of unmarried females’ familiarity with sexuality by claiming:
“Three things should be avoided: building a house on a road, marrying a woman who
primary motivation or not. According to oral texts from the classical period, expression of
female awareness of sexuality in general was acceptable as long as unmarried women did
164
For discussion of female sexuality in marriage within a North African Muslim context, see
Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society.
165
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 25.
166
Ibid., 25.
167
Ibid., 25.
168
Ibid., 25. (The square brackets in this quotation are in the original text by Kapteijns and Ali.)
69
not transgress the limits, meaning engaging in untoward behaviour outside and/or not
social resources through affinal kin, awareness of sexuality, which generally indicated
sexual maturity, was seen as an added incentive. Sexual maturity is often considered the
what Terence Turner refers to as “bio-sexual development.”170 In this case, the materiality
of the self is emphasized as the primary platform for sexuality. As such, Somali girls of a
certain age were expected to signal their readiness for marriage through explicit dress (such
synonymous with chastity but also extended to female modesty, signaling Rey Chow’s
reasoning that “female sexuality itself [needed to be] barred from entering a community
except in the most non-transgressive form.”172 Sexual modesty then, became the desired
measure of Somali femininity, as evident in oral texts from the classical poetic period from
the first half of the twentieth century.173 These texts allude to sexual modesty as an inherent
trait of a ‘proper’ girl through couplets such as these: “men are issue-solvers, women are
169
Ibid., 25-26.
170
Terence Turner, “The Social Skin,” in Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of
Material Life, ed. Margaret Lock and Judith Farquhar (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2007), 87.
171
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 26.
172
Rey Chow, Ethics After Idealism: Theory—Culture—Ethnicity—Reading (Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), 61.
173
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 25.
70
modest.”174 This conception of modesty and Somali womanhood indexes what I refer to as
the gabar xishood leh discourse. The question of chastity then, in a way, becomes moot in
conjunction with sexual awareness, since implicitly contained within sexual awareness is
sexual modesty. In other words, these preconditions for marriage insinuate modest
At the same time, sexual desire in this context is the expression of female sexuality
outside the restraints of and not leading to marriage. Sexual desire was theorized,
“…scholarship on the history of sexuality challenges this biologistic view… [and instead
champions] ‘constructionist’ [models which view]… desire, sexual or otherwise,… not [as]
a constant or a given but [a]s shaped in crucial ways by the very manner in which we think
and speak about it.”176 As sexual desire was constructed as female sexuality outside
marriage, any performance of sexual desire negated sexual modesty/“good shame.” This, in
The manner in which female sexual desire was talked about was also very telling. As the
expression of female sexuality was allocated to specific sites (courtship rituals) where the
174
Ibid., 25.
175
Gregory M. Pflugfelder, “Cartographies of Desire: Male-Male Sexuality in Japanese Discourse,”
in Beyond the Body Proper: Reading the Anthropology of Material Life, ed. Margaret Lock and
Judith Farquhar (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), 400.
176
Ibid., 400. (Emphasis added.)
71
normative behaviour aligned with the image of gabar xishood leh, it only become
These gendered patterns are illuminated through the figure of Margaret Laurence. In
1950, before she became a Canadian literary icon, Laurence travelled to British Somaliland
where she documented her travels in her memoir The Prophet’s Camel Bell. Of particular
interest to her were Somali folktales and oral poetry. As a European-Canadian, she did not
have access to female poets and her research primarily focused on the voices of the local
men.177 In one of her interviews inquiring about female poetry, she was told that “proper
women” did not talk about love in their poetry and it was only “prostitutes” who sang love-
songs.178 What is transparent in the men’s feedback are how expressions of love in female
poetry reinforced the fixed perception of the differences between “proper” and “improper”
Somali womanhood, first through the declarative statement about objectionable topics for
Somali women, and second, through the usage of the lexical item “prostitutes.” This
response further cements the idea that love in female poetry was a euphemism for sexual
desire. While Laurence’s interlocutors dismissed love poetry, it was evident that it existed
productions utilizing codes of xishood; however, these expressions were not acknowledged,
as they did not fit what was considered the typical productions of female sexual desire
within classical poetry. Performances depicting overt expressions of sexual desire were
177
Margaret Laurence, A Tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose (Toronto: ECW Press, 1993),
27.
178
Ibid., 27.
72
considered the only productions of female sexual desire in Somali public culture—a
such as the bittikoober, a spirit possession poem/dance, extended to the moral character of
the performers. The poets involved within these expressive practices were demeaned
through the claim that they did not conform to the Somali ideal of womanhood or gabar
xishood leh.179 The bittikoober, a spirit possession performance from northern Somalia, has
two elements: a poem accompanied by a dance. What is evident in the bittikoober, similar
to other possession dances, is the explicit display of female sexuality. Janice Boddy,
through her work on spirit possession in northern Sudan, alludes to the mimetic parallels of
the “entering of a spirit,” usually male, into a woman’s body and the act of heterosexual
mimics seemingly outlandish speech and behaviour in such a way that makes it transparent
that the “woman does not act through her spirit, [but] the spirit acts through her.”181 In this
regard, the spirit “makes keen use of signs that proclaim its identity. It swaggers, struts, is
impolite, gives commands and refuses to answer when addressed, none of which are
179
Brian Morris, “Zar Cults in Northern Somalia,” in Religion and Anthropology: A Critical
Introduction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 85.
180
Janice Boddy, Wombs and Alien Spirits: Women, Men, and the Zar Cult in Northern Sudan
(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 328.
181
Ibid., 149.
73
typical…[of the] women.”182 As such, atypical behaviour or speech is attributed to the spirit
and not the woman herself. Similar to the Sudanese trances, Somali possession
performances, saar, utilize the same procedure of a male spirit entering a female body. The
emphasis on the spirit makes it permissible for a woman to express sexual desire—a role
The bittikoober differs from more mainstream Somali trances, however, in several
ways, in particular, the marital status of the female poets and the mixed gender
participatory space. In saar performances, the spirits often possessed married women,
although there have been cases of single women.183 Unmarried women, on the other hand,
could only perform the bittikoober, because “a woman [could not] be married to two.”184
that it reiterates the acceptable domain of female sexual expression. In other words, as the
sexuality of a married woman was confined to the parameters of heterosexual marriage, the
bittikoober was an exclusionary space within the discourse. Indirectly then, the bittikoober
was recognized as a performance of sexual desire, both by the state of singlehood and the
Along with the masculinity of the spirit, there are male performers, secondary to the
lead female poet. Unlike typical trance performances, which were usually contained within
182
Ibid., 149.
183
I.M. Lewis, Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1986), 53.
184
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 30.
74
private and women-only spaces, the bittikoober called for a mixed-gender gathering. In
fact, the inclusion of men in a predominantly female space acknowledges not only the
active but the necessary participation of men, specifically within the context of sexual
desire.
Within this particular poem, a woman expresses the tension in/of her body—a tension
The young men: I will drive it out, sister/ It is what cut the strength of your
arms, sister/ the one who made you furious.185
The female performer’s words hint at sexual desire through the references to her ‘skin’ and
‘flesh’ undergoing violent episodes that seem out of her control. The usage of such verbs as
“crawling,” “choking,” and “creeping” further suggests an instability that comes from
within, hinting at an internal state which appears to simultaneously sap her energy yet
invigorate her. This agitated state—the possession of a male spirit within a single woman’s
body—demands the performance of unmarried men. In calling out the names of specific
men, Xareed and Xasan, the female performer acknowledges that their presence is a
necessary aspect of the ritual. Her plea and their avowal also indicates the liberating force
within the bittikoober poem above, proclaims “only their presence…and in particular [their]
185
Ibid., 30. (Original square brackets.)
75
sweat could cure her.”186 In other words, there is a complicit agreement that this particular
space allows for unmarried women suffering from a mysterious ailment that only specific
As seen earlier in saar and zar performances, maleness legitimated the expression of
female sexuality. However, in the bittikoober, neither the male spirit nor male performers
distinction between sexual awareness and sexual desire, the condition of marriage was
constructed as the appropriate arena for female sexuality—as a code of xishood—and while
the bittikoober parodied courtship rituals in that it revealed sexual maturity and mimicked
certain behaviours, the fact it was “almost the same, but not quite”—to use Bhabha’s
Poetic performances such as the bittikoober, then, became the preeminent token of
desire—was distanced from the notion of gabar xishood leh, and xishood in general, overt
expressions of sexual desire were systematically scorned. The association of poetic content
and the prevailing status of women’s poetry contributed to the subordinate subject position
of these classical female poets. In fact, I would argue that there is a correlation between the
poetry and the discourse, read as female in a patriarchal society and deemed inferior as a
result “since an important feature of dominant ideologies [was] precisely the control of not
186
Ibid., 30.
187
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 123. (Original emphasis.)
76
only the content but also the valued means of expression.”188 This repeated silencing of
female voices was not only limited to women who performed overt expressions of desire in
their poetry, but extended to all women, since Somali womanhood was defined by an
absence of female sexual desire. The configuration of xishood and sexual desire as polar
expressions of sexual desire, then, were attributed a diminished stance eradicating most of
them from the historiography of Somali classical poetry. Lidwien Kapteijns implies this
through her observation that “[t]here are indications that girls and especially women
composed many such love buraanburs, but only a few have been preserved.”189 The
inferior status of female poetry in conjunction with sexual desire is further revealed through
the anonymity of the female poets. As Jama laments, because of the silencing of women’s
voices, the genealogy of female classical poetry is opaque.190 As a result, Kapteijns, who
collected these poems, which I analyze below, does not list names, but rather regions where
the poetry originated.191 The metrical structure also indicates its time period.192 These three
188
Brinkley Messick, “Subordinate Discourse: Women, Weaving, and Gender Relations in North
Africa,” American Ethnologist, 14 no. 2 (1987): 217.
189
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 29.
190
Jama, “Silent Voices: The Role of Somali Women’s Poetry in Social and Political Life,” Oral
Tradition 9, no.1 (1994): 186.
191
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 3.
192
Ibid., 4.
77
indicators—poetic style, region, and time period—is often how poetry is referenced. In this
case, the poetry I look at in complex counterdiscourses is buraanbur and guux produced in
Northern Somalia during the Era of Fire and Embers. Despite the differing poetic structure
of non-prestigious genres of classical poetry such as the two explored below and the
prevalent. Furthermore, the use of codes of xishood within the buraanbur and guux styles
Hybrid Discourses
The circumstances arising from a subordinate position are meant to silence one’s
voice and agency. However, recalling bell hooks’ assertion of the necessity to speak, found
in her term “coming to voice,” and the complicated nuances through which agency can take
form, forces us to ponder how Somali female poets perform their subjectivities.
enacting subordinate agency. If gabar xishood leh was the dominant discourse for Somali
womanhood with its erasure of female sexual desire, overt performances of sexual desire
such as the bittikoober are the predominant fixtures of the counterdiscourse of gabar
xishood leh. Hybrid discourses, however, while appearing benign, are a probable avenue for
that challenge the dominant discourse through the expression of female sexual desire while
78
xishood in Somali non-prestigious classical female poetry. Below I look, first, at the
association of female sexual desire and modesty in poetry, before turning to recoding codes
of xishood, in particular within complex performances of gabar xishood leh. I end with a
thinking about the agentive possibilities of codes of xishood, I turn to the overlapping
Sexual desire, modesty, and female subjectivity have long been documented within
Bedouin female subjectivity, with its attempt to silence female sexuality, in the
Muslim womanhood: female sexual desire and modesty. Moneera Al-Ghadeer describes the
tension as such in Saudi Arabian Bedouin female poetry: “Even though desire seems to
have an erotic overtone in these poems, it usually displayed a woman’s wanting and
longing for a male lover, juxtaposed with the external forces that women have to navigate
social mores that establish female sexuality within specific parameters, such as modesty, it
193
For work on Muslim women, sexuality, and female poetry, see Marla Segol, “Representing the
Body in Poems by Medieval Muslim Women,” Medieval Feminist Forum, 45 (2009): 147-169.
194
Al-Ghadeer, Desert Voices: Bedouin Women’s Poetry in Saudi Arabia, 51.
79
would be interesting to ponder the ways female poets negotiate the duality contained within
Bedouin female sexuality. While it appears that poetry is the necessary means for the
expression of sexual desire and modesty, the poem below reveals that modesty is
disproportionately emphasized:
The declaration of sexual desire in the first section of the stanza is disavowed in the second
part by stressing modesty. By renouncing sexual desire, it reinforces the fact that “…erotic
desire is considered inappropriate and should remain unspoken. Consequently, [the poet]
conceals her longing by describing the purity of her mouth and then ultimately veiling it, as
if she appropriates silence…”196 As the covering of the female mouth with the Bedouins of
the Arabian peninsula—burgu and batula veiling—indicated chastity, the explicit reference
to the lips as veiled reestablishes the poet as a modest woman from the slip produced by the
articulation of sexual desire.197 The poet then turns to the tropes surrounding female
modesty by symbolically “eating” back her words of desire and trivializing female
195
Ibid., 53.
196
Ibid., 56.
197
For discussion of different types of mouth veiling in the Arabian peninsula, see Christina
Lindholm, “Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates,” in Encyclopedia of
National Dress: Traditional Clothing around the World, Vol. 1, ed. Jill Condra (Santa Barbara, CA:
ABC-CLIO, LLC, 2013), 67.
80
sexuality in general. In other words, “[t]he poet…by ending on a satirical note,
reappropriat[es] the rhetoric of modesty and politesse. By stating her desire, she almost
gives up her position as a ‘good’ and honourable woman; but in order to retain her position
she negates it.”198 These two last lines, “I say this as a joke and sketch/ To amuse the
anguished mind,” are most telling of the abject positioning of female sexual desire in
Bedouin Arabian culture and appear to serve as a foil to female modesty. However, it is this
slippery negotiation between the two that allows the articulation of sexual desire.
While in Bedouin Arabian female poetry the coexistence of female sexual desire
and modesty was contested, North African Bedouin poetry was considered the legitimate
format for revealing sexual desire. What was denied in quotidian speech for the Awlad ‘Ali
women, Bedouins in Egypt near the Libyan border, could only be expressed within the
space of poetry.199 Adhering to a strict moral system, women were rebuked for expressing
boundaries.201 It was only within the poetic realm, then, that sexual desire and female
I cite these two examples to showcase the existence of hybrid discourses of female
sexual agency alongside modesty amongst women in tribal societies. More importantly,
though, I wanted to highlight how moral and tribal codes drew specific boundaries for the
198
Al-Ghadeer, Desert Voices: Bedouin Women’s Poetry in Saudi Arabia, 55.
199
Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society, 226.
200
Ibid., 226.
201
Ibid., 221.
81
expression of female sexual desire, female modesty and poetry—borders that are resisted
and negotiated and lie at the core of subordinate agency. The preferential treatment of
modesty contained within the construction of a tribal Muslim womanhood, then, is useful in
revealing its affective impulse and its emancipatory capabilities—in particular the
expansion of meanings associated with these codes. In looking at codes of xishood, I want
to illustrate the conjoined nature of modesty and female desire and also the consideration of
Codes of xishood are certain conditions that signal expressions of xishood such as
the marital state. As discussed earlier, marriage in the Era of Fire and Embers offered a
political and economic advantage to Somali families and (at times) clans. Kapteijns, in her
comprehensive analysis of gender norms and their correlation to morality, argues that the
concept of romantic love and the notion of companionate marriage was a construction of
arranged by (and in the best interest of) the families of the couple….”203 Since sexual
202
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 109.
203
Ibid., 109.
82
was contained within the marital state. As marriage became the legitimate space for
xishood and ushered in feelings of affect and attachment to the gabar xishood leh narrative.
This shared cultural norm, I argue, opens the space for single women to express
respectability garners acceptance and reinforces the hegemonic discourse of gabar xishood
leh, therefore vindicating any associations. This purification, then, allows the expression of
female sexual desire without condemnation. As recoding typically connotes the ascription
of another meaning to a particular symbol, I am not advocating for the replacement but
rather the recasting of female sexual desire within the signification of xishood.
powerless in the choice of a bridegroom and more importantly, dictating the conditions of
expression of female sexuality. This lack of agency, along with the prescribed notions of
gabar xishood leh enacted within specific socially constructed arenas with precise
sexuality, then, codes of xishood contain a liberating quality. Speaking through codes
contains not only the agentive power of “talking back” but also a means of self-
83
within complex performances of gabar xishood leh.
Complex performances of gabar xishood leh in classical Somali female poetry utilize
the codes of xishood, in particular the concept of marriage to express sexual desire in
women-only spaces. The buraanbur, the female genre in classical poetry, was performed
solely for a female audience. In this particular poem, the female poet calls out to an
unknown man, in the impersonal second person and third person subjective pronoun:
You, who are like the full moon and the midday sun/ You, who are like the
rising sun veiled by a fine mist/ the dawn to which wakes/ You, who were taken
to paradise [before] the Prophet’s countenance/ I shiver when he moves his
long neck/ Like the Prophet’s Hadith he is ever-present in my heart/ The road
along which he passes stands out for me.204
The subject matter of the poem—that of cherishment—at first glance appears not to be
extraordinary in a love poem, but the theme of sexual desire was commonplace in Somali
love poetry. Much more than a praise poem, this demonstrates female sexual desire through
the word “shiver” in reaction to her phantom lover’s movements. The lack of nominal
references in tandem with the specificity of her lover’s physical attributes, “his long neck,”
ambiguity is chiefly indicative of sexual desire, as female sexuality outside of the marital
204
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 29.
84
At the same time, markers of religiosity valorize the concept of gabar xishood leh
as a girl who has a religious upbringing, which not only lends credence to, but also
countenance and Hadith, cloaking the poem in Islamic imagery, indicate a legitimization of
female sexual desire within the institution of marriage.205 As marriage is a code of xishood,
the expression of female desire within these parameters was not considered to transgress
socio-moral boundaries. We can glean through her words, “The road along which he passes
stands out for me,” an element of predestination in which she and her lover are fated to be
together. The assumed longevity of a romantic relationship again connotes marriage as the
only legitimate kinship. While the expression of female sexual desire is implicit in the
The Somali word guux typically means a low rumbling sound. This poetic genre,
referred to as the “nomadic blues,” was often performed by young unmarried men and “[i]t
[wa]s clear that of all the age and gender groups the unmarried young men had (and took)
special literary license to use sexually explicit language and to reject—in song—a status
quo that allowed sexual relations with a girl or woman only within marriage.”206 In
contrast, unmarried women were dissuaded from performing the guux since discussion of
female sexuality did not conform to the gabar xishood leh ideal. Regardless, there were
205
The Hadith is a report of the sayings and actions of Muhammed. The Sunnah, which is the
prescribed conditions of a moral life for Muslims, is based on the practices of Muhammed. As such,
any reference to Muhammed—considered the last prophet in Islam—or the Hadith and Sunnah is a
visible marker of Islamic religiosity.
206
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 27.
85
female poets who performed the guux, albeit in less sexually suggestive language than the
men. Here is an unmarried girl lamenting her single state through a guux:
marriage—mimicking acts of sexual awareness. The poet laments her position among her
natal kin and her lack of a husband, by claiming, “I will perish and my womanhood will be
blighted.” In this regard, her “womanhood” refers to the state of marriage—considered the
natural aspiration for women within “traditional” Somali society. She calls out to her future
relationship through her words: “I am not running away from you/ build a family with me.”
She reveals her excitement for what appears to be the marital state through somatic
responses, such as the pounding of her heart—reactions that I consider indicative of sexual
desire.
Physiological reactions within this poem are more telling of sexual desire. In
particular, the last two lines hint at something more than marriage: “Something has gotten
won’t the day break?” What is this something within her body that is consuming her at
night? There is an element of desperation, of urgency, in the words of this guux that belies
207
Ibid., 30.
86
the simple notion of marriage for the sake of establishing one’s own household. Another
indication the content of this guux is not merely about a legitimate union is through the
reference to the poet’s father. As stated earlier, “traditional” marriages were arranged by
male kin, predominantly the father. The authorization of the father was then paramount in
the acceptance of a marriage. In this guux, the poet reveals her father’s discouragement:
“My father who always tells me to stay put.” While one can argue that the father’s
disapproval could stem from the selection of bridegroom—a man of not his own
words “stay put,” it appears that the father is adamant in his rejection of a particular state—
In both the buraanbur and the guux, the expression of female sexual desire was
mediated through codes of xishood. By recoding female sexual desire within utterances of
marriage, complex performances of gabar xishood leh allow what Bhabha calls a
“hybridization of discourse,” where sexual desire and xishood coexist.208 Brinkley Messick,
in his work on Yemeni authoritative texts, examines this phenomenon of the text within. In
his analysis of the matn (basic text) and sharh (commentary), he shows how “[t]he
commentary…is inserted in spaces opened up in the original text. Although they remain
distinct, the two are not physically isolated from each other….”209 Furthermore, “[i]n a
208
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 158.
209
Brinkley Messick, The Calligraphic State: Textual Domination and History in a Muslim Society
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), 31.
87
work of sharh, interpretations literally become part of the text interpreted.”210 In a similar
vein, the articulation of female sexual desire is embedded within the gabar xishood leh
narrative through the recoding of the symbol of xishood. Differently put, one needs the
Through expanding the meanings associated with codes of xishood while retaining
its familiarity, classical female Somali poets reveal rhizomatic relationalities contained
within in-between space. More importantly, speaking through codes and counterpublics not
only allows the production of their hybrid subjectivities, but also shifts the locus of power
dynamics intermittently and illustrates how subordinate agency—what was once at the
210
Ibid., 31.
88
89
Chapter 4
In the last chapter, we saw that Somali “traditional” womanhood was not
xishood leh. Rather, Somali women negotiated and resisted this label by “talking back”
through social codes and expressing hybrid subjectivities comprising sexual modesty/“good
shame” and female sexual desire in classical Somali poetry. However, the potency of the
discourse of gabar xishood leh continued to linger in the Somali social psyche as the sole
measure of Somali womanhood. As such, I begin to think through the ways that gabar
women through modern poetry disrupt this static identity. I look at the ways modern Somali
female poets use codes of xishood as a means to negotiate and expand on the notion of
Somali womanhood sans sexual agency. By listening to the other, modern female poets
express their hybrid subjectivities through social codes recognizable to other members of
the Somali female intimate public. In this chapter, I turn to theories surrounding the public
sphere, female sexuality, and affective belonging and begin to lay the groundwork to look
at intimate publics and the role social codes play within the space of performance.
90
in the conception of public sphere, as theorized by Jurgen Habermas, there was a plethora
of intimacy implicitly contained within personal encounters in coffee shops and street
sociality.211 The Somali public sphere, similarly, was manifested in public gatherings and
dictated the parameters of participation through oral poetry in two ways: distinction by
gender and specific themes. In the modern poetry of (post)independence Somalia, both men
and women were actively vocal through public culture and through definitions of Somali
womanhood. The role of women as national and modern subjects centered on issues of
sexuality became intrinsically tied up with notions of nationalism and modernity and fell
facets of female identity. In a similar way, the rhetoric surrounding gabar xishood leh,
particularly within the context of modern poetry, constructs an ideal Somali womanhood
synonymous with modesty and an absence of sexual desire. I challenge this idea by
modern female poetry. Through that, I claim that xishood and sexual desire are equidistant
notions within complex performances of gabar xishood leh. In addition, hybrid discourse is
dependent on the existence of alternative publics, which are conducive to the existence of
211
For discussion of intimacy, sociality, and the public sphere, see Francis Cody, “Echoes of the
teashop in a Tamil newspaper,” Language and Communication 31, no. 3 (2011): 243-254; see also
Setha M. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2000).
91
hybrid subjectivities. In this chapter I will trace this through the formation of intimate
publics, performative listening and the affective belonging and attachment to codes of
xishood.
In her book The Female Complaint, Berlant focuses on the nexus of intimacy,
publicity, and female agency in American public culture. Specifically, she claims the
impetus of women’s agency in the public sphere stems from a shared understanding.212
Another way of thinking is that “[w]hat makes a public sphere intimate is an expectation
that consumers of its particular stuff already share a worldview and emotional knowledge
that they have derived from a broadly common historical experience.”213 It is this
underlying commonality that unites relative strangers and affectively connects them.214
This definition of “intimate publics” is what I utilize for my analysis of Somali female
modern poetry. Due to the shared knowledge and attachment to codes of xishood, and the
affective pull of the gabar xishood leh discourse, Somali female modern poets formed an
and discussion about how to live as x.”215 In this regard, I argue modern Somali poets form
a communal identity that offers a possibility of belonging to the gabar xishood leh ideal
212
Lauren Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American
Culture (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), viii.
213
Ibid., viii. (Original emphasis.)
214
Ibid., xi.
215
Ibid., viii.
92
whilst simultaneously employing the means to exert their sexual agency, in particular
Alongside intimate publics, Somali womanhood, and social codes, I want to bring in
the act of listening as a means of negotiating codes of xishood and opening new spaces for
belonging. In particular, I want to look at the messiness surrounding modern Somali female
intimate publics that are aurally mediated. Listening, unlike hearing, is enabled by
intentionality. In other words, there is a conscious deliberateness associated with the act of
listening. Adriana Cavarero, in her examination of Italo Calvino’s story “A King’s Ear,”
demonstrates the parallels between hearing and listening through the figure of the king.216
Unable to extricate himself from the oppressive acoustic sounds of the palace until he starts
to listen, Cavarero stresses the myriad ways that listening for the king “opens a horizon of
perception who[se] existential status” previously was limited.217 In a similar way, listening
listening as a means to understand the call and response elicited and contained within this
act.
216
Adriana Cavarero, For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 2.
217
Ibid., 2.
218
Kate Lacey, “Listening Overlooked: An Audit of Listening as a Category in the Public Sphere,”
Javnost-The Public: Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture 18, no. 4
(2011): 12.
93
This notion of performative act, typically associated with speech act theorist J.L.
Austin, illustrates how language more than merely representative can be conceptualized as
an action.219 Even more than that “…the terms of Austin’s classifying system proliferate
to in the world.”220 Extending this idea of the performative to listening, I propose that there
is a call and response dynamic within performative listening. In other words, what
performative listening does is emit a call and elicit a response, both acoustically and
imperative for accessing sarbeeb (the hidden message) in the social codes of xishood.
Before getting to the referentiality of performative listening, I would like to clarify first the
acceptance of social connection. In looking at Masoud Raouf’s documentary What Does the
Tree Remember? The Politics of Telling Stories, Dina Georgis traces how the lack of a
response often has detrimental consequences.221 The impetus of the documentary is the fate
of Habib, an Iranian student who hangs himself on a tree in Ontario after being a political
prisoner in Iran. His suicide illustrates his isolation and silence as his call goes unanswered.
219
Kendall Gerdes, “Performativity,” Transgender Studies Quarterly 1, nos. 1-2 (2014): 148.
220
J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, ed. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1975), quoted in Kendall Gerdes, “Performativity,” Transgender Studies
Quarterly 1, nos. 1-2 (2014): 148 (emphasis added).
221
Dina Georgis, “What Does the Tree Remember? The Politics of Telling Stories,” TOPIA 25
(2011): 224.
94
As Georgis rightly acknowledges, the time and location of Habib’s suicide—during the day
and near a public highway—speak louder than a written suicide note.222 As Cavarero
requirement for listening and response.223 Contained within the response, then, is answering
the call emitted, stressing the relationality between the call and response. In Somali female
intimate publics, I want to reiterate not only what they are saying, but also how that is then
Instead of thinking of listening and response separately, Tsisti Ella Jaji proposes “a
model of solidarity that is neither rigid nor bound by orthodoxies, one which could bear
witness to difference and respond to it in joyful creativity, one which values individual
then, the singular act of listening is actually not isolated from the response, but intertwined.
Furthermore, she propagates the multiplicity of responses. In quoting Jacques Coursil, she
responses, which are free and innumerable. Edouard Glissant would call such a scene a
as a response then, allows an acceptance, and within Somali female intimate publics is
222
Ibid., 224.
223
Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1996), 9.
224
Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Africa in Stereo: Modernism, Music, and Pan-African Solidarity (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014), 9.
225
Ibid., 10.
95
The call and response within performative listening, then, occurs in space where
hybrid discourse is performed and negotiated within Somali female intimate publics.
Analogous to José Esteban Muñoz’s term “disidentification,” which allows the latent
between the speaker and listener through a shared understanding. As part of the female
intimate public, Somali modern poets have a commonality with their attachment to the
gabar xishood leh construct. As Sara Ahmed argues, some bodies are contained within a
field of signification that activates affect. 228 With her word “stickiness,” she demonstrates
listening, is preeminent in Homi Bhabha’s “right to narrate” where he stresses not only the
need to express one’s lived experience, but also the urgency of its being heard.230
Within Somali female intimate publics, the recognition of the hidden message
contained with codes of xishood allows modern female poets to communicate and express
their hybrid subjectivities. This hidden message is accessible to a select few who can access
it through performative listening. Following this line of inquiry, I ask: how do performative
226
Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 31.
227
McRae, “Listening to a Brick: Hearing Location Performatively,” Text and Performance
Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2012): 336.
228
Ibid., 40.
229
Ibid., 40.
230
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, xxv.
96
listening and the hidden message enable hybrid discourse and hybrid subjectivities in
Somali female intimate publics? I next turn to the productive tension of modern and
extended to modern expressive practices in form and content. Classified under the Family
of Miniature Genres, the wiglo, dhaanto, hirwo, and the belwo, all considered non-
prestigious poetry (with its simplified poetic structure and its themes of romantic love),
ushered in a new era of Somali poetics.231 The belwo genre with its structural composition
of a few lines of poetry was unusual but instrumental in Somali poetics.232 Eventually, this
couplet poetry, the belwo evolved into a longer version referred to as heello starting in the
late 1940s.233 The heello, the chief tool of the Somali modern elite was “rooted in the
tradition of the pastoralist, but has other characteristics too, such as its use of musical
instrument, which have been imported from other cultures.”234 As such, sometimes the
Somali term for “song,” hees, was used interchangeably with heello.235 In other words, the
use of imagery, alliteration and allusion common to “traditional” poetry was evident in
231
John W. Johnson, Heellooy Heelleellooy: The Development of the Genre Heello in Modern
Somali Poetry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974), 15.
232
Jama, “Fighting to be Heard: Somali Women’s Poetry,” African Languages and Cultures 4, no. 1
(1991): 45.
233
Johnson, Heellooy Heelleellooy: The Development of the Genre Heello in Modern Somali
Poetry, 16.
234
Ibid., 3.
235
Ibid., xvi.
97
modern poetry along with new changes in subject-matter.236 Whilst conservative religious
elders and “traditional” politicians disapproved of the new style with its emphasis on love
and urbanity, it found favour among the new elite: young town dwellers.237
The belwo and the heello revolved around issues relevant to the Somali elite (young,
educated, modern) and as such, in addition to the topic of “love,” these genres were also
contingent on the political climate in Somalia.238 With the independence of the Somali state
in 1960, the heello reflected issues of modernity and nationalism.239 Comparable to other
nationalist and modern projects of the Global South, the social position and contribution of
Somali women were salient concerns among both men and women.240 The matter at hand
for Somali women was pushing for more inclusive practices, as Somali female poets who
were an integral aspect of the nation-building process “…were now finding themselves
outside of the very political and state institutions they fought for, and the histories in which
they were critical actors.”241 The limited accessibility of the public sphere for women
stemmed partly from a concept of Somali womanhood that had clear limits to women’s
participation in social and political life. As poetry was the primary platform for public
culture, the heello became the contested terrain of Somali womanhood: modern or
236
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 107.
237
Ibid., 107.
238
Ibid., 106.
239
Ibid., 107.
240
For analysis of gender and modernist and nationalist projects in Africa, see Margot Badran,
Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996).
241
Aidid, “Haweenku Wa Garab (Women are a Force): Women and the Somali Nationalist
Movement, 1943-1960,” Bildhaan 10 (2010): 116.
98
“traditional.”242 Therefore, poems “…debating the role of women in the new society, could
be heard” predominantly in the capital city of Mogadishu.243 The heello also allowed
life and the political sphere of the new state. Questions surrounding women’s rights and
modern subjecthood were not only propelled by specific nationalistic discourses, but also
modern subjecthood was primarily concerned with individual rights and liberties, Somali
by the emphasis on two themes: the concept of romantic love and the notion of
according to Lidwien Kapteijns.245 Illustrated in modern poetry, then, was the expectation
of one choosing her future spouse, an act that pronounced the agentive power of women. In
242
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 101.
243
Johnson, Heellooy Heelleellooy: The Development of the Genre Heello in Modern Somali
Poetry, 3.
244
For further discussion of Muslim women, agency, and modernity, see Ousseina D. Alidou,
Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger (Madison:
The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005); see also Arzoo Osanloo, The Politics of Women’s Rights
in Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009).
245
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 109.
99
addition to indexing Somali modern womanhood as female political empowerment, I would
like to highlight their agency as sexual beings by including the often neglected concept of
female desire. Differently put, references to love in modern poetry are synonymous with
sexual desire, and in conjunction with urbanity and politics assert modern Somali
womanhood. For this reason, modern Somali womanhood was denounced “[i]n the songs,
and thus in [the] public, popular discourse of this post-independence era…[as] inauthentic,
Western construct “…members of [the] male nationalist elite who created the love
terms of the northern Somali pastoral tradition.”247 As such, the push for a culturally
“authentic” Somali womanhood as a foil to Western modernity allowed the space to re-
iterate specific ideals of a “traditional” Somali womanhood with its fixture on morality.248
heello, then, one can pinpoint the tension between the desire to be modern and to socially
belong within a culturally “authentic” (read: “traditional”) discourse. This modern but
moral female subject, what Kapteijns refers to as “moral womanhood,” shares the
desexualized femininity that is the primary foundation of what I call the dominant discourse
246
Ibid., 115.
247
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 5.
248
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 109.
249
Ibid., 114-115.
100
of gabar xishood leh. The asexual female ideal of gabar xishood leh erases expression of
female sexual desire and agency and upholds the enactment of sexual modesty/“good
the form of binary oppositions within the Somali social imaginary, modern poetry was read
through this particular lens. What lends further credence to this interpretation is that poets
and songwriters of the prominent heello genre, usually men, propagated notions of gabar
xishood leh.250 However, instead of focusing on the construction and the producers of the
heello, I would like to shift the attention to the performance of modern poetry in this
chapter. In other words, I argue that the female poets perform the heello in such a way that
exposes a different meaning countering and unsettling the notion of idealized Somali
womanhood. What I mean by this is that there is a duality contained within the
performances. On the one hand, groups of three or four female poets debate the merits of
gabar xishood leh and bemoan the perils of modern womanhood in the heello. On the other
hand, there is a deeper meaning implicit within the social codes of xishood understood only
among members of a Somali female intimate public. In this way, I argue the call and
response interplay contained with performative listening allows the Somali female intimate
public the space to express a hybrid discourse of xishood and sexual desire.
250
Kapteijns and Ali, Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in
Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980, 5.
101
Somali Female Intimate Public and Modern Poetry
The gaber xishood leh construct is deeply ingrained in the Somali female psyche as
the “authentic” representation of Somali femininity based on its “traditional” values. Due to
laying the foundation of a Somali female intimate public. According to Lauren Berlant, a
female intimate public has two components: a shared history and worldview; and an
ongoing attachment and action to that communal social outlook.251 Recalling Sara Ahmed’s
notion of “outside in,” in which certain bodies have a “stickiness” that attracts affect, we
can consider gabar xishood leh as an affect-carrying construction that fosters attachment.
The emotional investment in this rhetoric and the legitimized belonging it evinces, I
suggest, compels Somali girls and women to perform it through codes of xishood.
affective intensity of xishood. By lack of certain speech acts, I mean phrases that mark the
absence and/or erasure of female sexual desire and sexuality in general. As sexual
modesty/“good shame” is a fundamental aspect of the gabar xishood leh ideal, there is a
deep antipathy towards sexual desire. In addition to the void of expressions of sexual desire
in the rhetoric of gabar xishood leh, there are acute socio-cultural constructs such as the
institution of marriage and other religiously and culturally sanctioned customs. In modern
251
Berlant, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture,
5.
102
cultural heritage, also heralds the gabar xishood leh discourse in the heello. As such, both
male and female poets were familiar with and incorporated codes of xishood within modern
The fact that codes of xishood are culturally shared and recognizable within the
Somali social imaginary allows them to perceive through a particular lens, one that
reinforces the segregation of female sexual desire and sexual modesty/“good shame” within
the dominant discourse. This is evident in the surface reading of the heello, but misses
particular nuances. I suggest modern Somali female poets, as part of the larger female
intimate public, recognize and utilize the codes as an affective attachment to the dominant
discourse and simultaneously as a defiant means of expressing sexual desire and sexual
modesty/“good shame.” While the Somali female intimate public encompasses women who
share and are affectively invested in the gabar xishood leh narrative as a whole, in this
chapter when I refer to the Somali female intimate public it is specifically modern female
poets, who through performative listening negotiate codes of xishood. As Saba Mahmood
rightly reminds us, commonly held symbols of cultural hegemony are often used as a
agency, as in the case of the Cairene women.252 Oftentimes, resistance is covert, as José
Esteban Muñoz explains with his term “disidentification.” He states: “…resistance needs to
conformist path if they hope to survive a hostile public sphere. But for some,
252
Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, 6.
103
disidentification is a survival strategy that works within and outside the dominant public
sphere simultaneously.”253 In other words, the use of codes of xishood is significant for
revealing a new perspective hidden within what is considered a hegemonic symbol of the
gabar xishood leh discourse. For these reasons, I consider codes of xishood as implicitly
In this chapter, the modern female poets I am referencing were part of a larger
collective, the Waaberi group. Waaberi, meaning “new dawn” in the Somali language, was
Kapteijns, popular music renditions at that time “were part of the nationalist project of
‘modernity’ of the Somali nationalist movement and independent state from 1955 to
1991.”254 Initially spearheaded by members of the radio stations in Hargeisa (the cultural
capital in British Somaliland pre-independence) and Mogadishu, and later on the Radio
Artistes Association in 1968, it gained momentum with the support of the newly formed
government.255
While the members of Waaberi were predominantly men, there were prominent
female performers such as Magool, Hibo Muhammad, Fadumo Qasim, and Dalays and
253
Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, 5.
254
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 105.
255
Emma Brinkhurst, “Music, Memory and Belonging: Oral Tradition and Archival Engagement
Among the Somali Community of London’s King Cross” (PhD thesis, Goldsmith University of
London, 2012), 68.
104
Maryam Mursal who greatly influenced Somali modern poetry.256 These women, I argue,
used codes of xishood in such a way that opens alternative interpretations, in particular
through a hidden message that is recognizable by participants of the female intimate public.
Sarbeeb, or the hidden message, is prevalent in Somali poetic and narrative formats,
[a]s the name of this device implies, what is involved is the passing of a
message from one person (or group) to another in such a way as to prevent a
third party from understanding or suspecting. To accomplish this the poet must
employ images which seem to imply one point to the third party but which pass
the oral message on the person for whom it is intended.258
In other words, everyone listening to the poetry comprehends the superficial meanings
indicated through commonly held motifs. However, a message is passed covertly between
clueless to the underlying meaning. As Johnson claims, oftentimes the hidden message is
contained within an image; at other times, it appears in the form of riddle.259 I suggest that
256
For further discussion of the artist Magool, see Bashir Goth, “Magool: The Inimitable
Nightingale of Somali Music,” Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies 14 (2015): 1-
24.
257
Johnson, Heellooy Heelleellooy: The Development of the Genre Heello in Modern Somali
Poetry, 37.
258
Ibid., 37.
259
Ibid., 33.
105
the sarbeeb in the modern poetry that I analyze in this chapter is enacted through the use of
While I claim that the hidden message in the poems I look at below alludes to the
tension of female sexual desire and xishood in the gabar xishood leh ideal, sometimes the
sentiment in general.260 Maryan Mursal, one of the Somali female singers within the
Waaberi troupe, reveals a political sarbeeb within her song “Ulimada” (meaning “The
Professors”).261 While it seems to be a love song, the deeper meaning was a harsh criticism
of President Mohammed Siad Barre and his regime.262 For her, using sarbeeb was a
necessary means for enacting one’s public duty, particular as a musician. She states: “…as
artists [we] are responsible if something wrong is taking place in our society. It’s very
important for us to speak up, even though we may have to do it with a double tongue. We
have to speak out for our people.”263 Through emphasizing the importance of the hidden
Maryan, alongside other female members of the Waaberi collective, I claim, make
use of the hidden message poetic device through their negotiations of gabar xishood leh.
Socialization in the affective connection and attachment to the gabar xishood leh discourse
which defined the strict parameters for social belonging made the codes of xishood the
260
Ibid., 37.
261
“Maryan Mursal,” mp3.com, accessed June 9, 2016, http://mp3.com/artist/Maryam%2BMursal/
262
Ibid., http://mp3.com/artist/Maryam%2BMursal/
263
Polly De Blank, “Somali star’s road to Eden,” BBC African Perspective, last modified July 8,
2005. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4666121.stm
106
ultimate means for the containment of a hidden message—a sarbeeb that was recognizable
to other members of the Somali female intimate public. By this, I mean that the social codes
allowed sexual agency without segregating it from sexual modesty/“good shame.” Put
Looking at two particular poems, “Truly Marriage Causes Hardship” and “History
Has a Direction,” I will show how modern female poets showcase a hybrid discourse that is
readings of the poems: the first one with the aim of demonstrating the typical perception of
the interaction between the poets, and the second interpretation showcasing the hidden
message illustrating their hybrid discourse.264 In these two heello, the tension between
sexual desire/agency and xishood is illustrated by two motifs: marriage and dress. “Truly
Marriage Causes Hardship” has three female poets expressing separate stances: Maryan
Mursal and Faduumo Ali ‘Nakruuma take on a modern womanhood with its emphasis on
sexual desire/agency, and Hibo Mohamed’s enunciations of the gabar xishood leh
discourse reinforce a “traditional” womanhood sans female sexuality. Both viewpoints are
264
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 115-116.
107
Faduumo: Everyone has his own preference and taste is what sets people apart.
One cannot tell who is wealthiest from how someone presents himself. I prefer
rich men, who turn over lots of wealth and have capital; who, while you live
with them, put you in a huge house and give you a luxurious life. What about
you?
Hibo: Dear sister, Ruun, don’t get rid of the culture in which you were born or
run away from your cultural heritage. Don’t throw away the ways of your
ancestors. What I prefer is a man who establishes a home with you, receiving
you from your male relatives, with their blessing. You will live together
honestly, blessed by the Lord.265
In this poem, the continual references to marriage as a theme that sanitized Somali female
sexual agency is indicated in the erasure of desire within Hibo’s statements, emphasizing
the dependence on male kin. Implicit within this social position is a dominant idea ascribed
“Traditional” womanhood, then, reinforces not only the institution of marriage but also the
acceptance of non-choice. On the contrary, Maryan and Faduumo both establish that not
only do their preferences matter, more importantly they are constructed outside the domain
of marriage. While their means differ, the overall commonality for Maryan and Faduumo is
that agency, particularly sexual agency, is forged outside the marital state.
The poem “History Has a Direction” similarly exhibits the segregation of female
sexual desire/agency and xishood through dress. The four female poets have divergent
views: two concerned with “traditional” expressions and two with modern articulations of
Somali womanhood. Kinsi Adan and Khadija Hiiran expound on the tribulations of
“traditional” dress, highlighting its corporeal limitations and the social freedom “modern”
265
Ibid., 115.
108
dress offers. For Kinsi and Khadija, conservative attire implies a lack of sexual agency.
This point is supported by ‘Adar’s explicit reference of the connection of the gabar xishood
leh discourse and female sexuality. In contrast to the poets mentioned above, ‘Adar Ahmed
and Fadumo Elbai ‘Haldhaa’ both espouse the rhetoric of gabar xishood leh which
Kinsi: History has a direction people try to catch on to. The world is a journey
towards a beautiful dream that is guided by modernity. Don’t shortchange
yourself. It is a curse to stay behind one’s age-group. People have emancipated
themselves from these rags and heavy clothes you wear. Follow us on this path.
Shall I help you move forward and show you the way to the benefits it will
have?
‘Adar: Foolish one, a docile camel that does not protect itself from [other]
sucklings and does not kick away calves that are not its own, is left behind in
the dry season when its udders run dry. No one likes leftovers. Know the
meaning of my words. I do not spend the night with any man I may like in the
daytime. My treasure is untouched. I am a paragon of modesty and represent
the decency of all Somali girls.
Khadija: Putting yourself down is fatal. Even those who covered themselves
used to get into trouble, while those who disliked this clothing – as I have heard
tell – did not go wrong. It is better that you follow the person who takes your
side. One covers things only if there is something bad. Sleepy one, the
encampment has moved on. I am beckoning you to move forward. Follow us on
this path. Shall I show you the way to the benefits it will have?
Fadumo: They call me beautiful like the male ostrich. I still wear the finery and
am the leader of the tradition everyone knows is mine, of the ways in which my
mother reared me, of our cultural heritage. I love to support this way of life.
Contempt and dishonesty cannot undermine me, for I know these always cause
problems and destruction. You, lost soul, I tell you, of your dress and mine,
which of the two is more respectful, which one covers the body best?266
266
Ibid., 116.
109
As a result, both poems display a strict delineation of xishood and sexual desire/agency
through the emphasis of the dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh. Furthermore, ending
the poems with the viewpoint of “traditional” womanhood is indicative of its importance to
the male songwriters of these songs. Instead of this perspective, however, I propose looking
at particular phrases within the stanzas of each song and see how they hint at a hidden
message—a sarbeeb that indicates a hybrid discourse—one that contains sexual desire and
xishood.
In “Truly Marriage Causes Hardship,” Faduumo states: “Everyone has his own
preference and taste is what sets people apart. One cannot tell who is wealthiest from how
someone presents himself.”267 Her first line illustrates the diversity of opinions and
specifically differences in identity. In the context of the poem, we can see that she
dismisses categorical distinctions, in this case perhaps those of gabar xishood leh. In
addition, she stresses how misleading it is to judge on perception alone in her second line.
Her use of the word ‘wealthiest’ is interesting. While there is an indication that its reference
defined as plethora of desirable things, including attributes and qualities.268 One particular
reading of wealth is xishood in this framework, since the subject at hand is the separation of
sexual desire from xishood. The external manifestation of xishood, then, is not the sole
indication of gabar xishood leh. In this vein, one can propose that one cannot attribute
267
Ibid., 115.
268
Cf. New Oxford American Dictionary. 2nd ed., ed. Erin McKean (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2005).
110
gabar xishood leh behaviours and speech based solely on appearances. This point is
proclaim sexual desire more intently. The juxtaposition between the expression of sexual
desire and the insistence on a deeper look beyond appearances is telling of the nuances
hidden message.
The ambiguity shrouding sexual agency and xishood in tandem is further taken up
in “History Has a Direction,” where Khadija exclaims: “Putting yourself down is fatal.
Even those who covered themselves used to get into trouble, while those who disliked this
clothing – as I have heard tell – did not go wrong. It is better that you follow the person
who takes your side.”269 Khadija hints at the idea that categorizing oneself is detrimental to
self-identity. In her second line, like Faduumo in the previous song, she lays bare the
Specially, she claims that a conservative dress does not always correlate to behaviours
indicating xishood and conversely expressions of sexual agency does not negate xishood. In
particular, in the quoted stanza above, Khadija is highlighting a particular conundrum that
invalidates the notion that “traditional” women are asexual beings. In the original Somali
lines, she references certain actions of unmarried girls and women such as heermi jiray. In
heermi jiray, Somali women desirous of marriage would visit a campsite or familial
holding where there were known bachelors. In this way, they would seek out husbands. As
269
Kapteijns, “Discourse on Moral Womanhood in Somali Popular Songs, 1960-1990,” Journal of
African History 50 (2009): 109.
111
we saw in the last chapter, I claimed “traditional” women expressed sexual desire within
the confines of marriage, and as these women were taking the initiative, it appears to be a
clear example of sexual agency. What is interesting to note is while heermi jirray was not
encouraged among clans it was recognized as a legitimate path for unmarried women and
girls. Furthermore, women who performed this ritual were not considered to be outside the
parameters of gabar xishood leh. By alluding to this particular example, Khadija highlights
the blurred boundaries between dress and behaviours that indicate gabar xishood leh and
the expressions of sexual desires. Overall, it appears one could be considered a gabar
In both cases, the poems pinpoint fluidity between female sexual agency and
xishood through the hidden message. While hybrid discourse permeates the entirety of the
poems, the hidden message is only recognizable to other members of the female intimate
The act of listening, particularly within the context of oral poetry, is necessary for
understanding. More importantly, listening also draws the boundaries for social inclusion
and exclusion. Sometimes, these can be based on explicit measures such as language
acknowledges her inability to fathom certain nuances of the Somali language due to her
112
basic knowledge during her research in King’s Cross, London, England.270 Furthermore, to
her ears, everything “…was an almost overwhelming mesh of overlapping voices and
sounds.”271 While Brinkhurst’s distancing stems from her inability to speak Somali well,
native speakers also had difficulty understanding certain oral texts, according to B.W.
For the Somalis, listening to poetry is thus not only an artistic pleasure, but
provides them with the fascinating intellectual exercise of decoding the veiled
speech of the poet’s message. Sometimes, however, vagueness and obscurity
reaches such a pitch that the average listener would be quite perplexed… were
it not for the fact that there is a tacit poetic convention to help him.272
What Andrzejewski illustrates is the hidden message within Somali poetry, a message that
within codes of xishood were recognized among members of the Somali female intimate
public acoustically and affectively; however, they also served another purpose among the
poets themselves. The containment of the dialogue was contingent on the call that was
released and the response that the other offered. The acknowledgment of the shared
understanding is not only the basis of the hybrid discourse, but overlays the structure of
hybrid subjectivities. Through performative listening, Somali female intimate publics, and
the affect and attachment of codes of xishood as such, hybrid subjectivities—women who
270
Brinkhurst, “Music, Memory and Belonging: Oral Tradition and Archival Engagement Among
the Somali Community of London’s King Cross” (PhD thesis, Goldsmith University of London,
2012), 167.
271
Ibid., 167.
272
Andrzejewski, “Somali Literature,” in Literatures in African Languages: Theoretical Issues and
Sample Surveys, 43-44.
113
simultaneously consider themselves gabar xishood leh and exert sexual agency—can exist
114
115
Chapter 5
Conclusion
There’s always more than one map to a territory: you just have to intuit the terrain.
—DJ Spooky aka that Subliminal Kid273
[T]he unfamiliarity of other forms of life… [which exist] in the form of the fragment –the
fragmented, painful and sometimes original ways of inhabiting a world where none of the
available vocabularies can be fully inhabited, even when they are invoked and the attempt
at reconstruction takes the form a solitary self-creation in a space of destruction which is
also, sometimes, self-destruction.
—Stefania Pandolfo274
This thesis set out to demonstrate the negotiations and expansion of a hegemonic
construction of a Somali womanhood, gabar xishood leh, by Somali female poets in two
historical periods, 1899-1944 and 1969-1989, and two different locations (the pastoral
lands of Northern Somalia and the urban centre of Mogadishu, Somalia). My research
contextualized the practice of poetry in Somalia, and theorized how gendered norms and
codes, patriarchy, public intimacies, and listening practices intersect with Somali women’s
complex poetics. While I situated the origins of gabar xishood leh under the auspices of
national, and modern influences that dictated a particular way of being and created
273
DJ Spooky. Rhythm Science. Cambridge, MA: Mediawork/MIT, 2004.
274
Stefania Pandolfo, “‘The burning’: Finitude and the politico-theological imagination of illegal
migration,” Anthropological Theory 7, no. 3 (2007): 332.
116
xishood and sexual desire, which propelled a new understanding of gabar xishood leh,
Somali women also impacted Somali public culture and sphere through poetic and political
engagement, disclosing their role as social actors. As such, the aim for Somali female poets
was two-fold.
Complex performances of gabar xishood leh with their twinned expressions of sexual
desire and xishood reveal the hybrid subjectivities of classical and modern Somali female
xishood leh—for contained within hybridity is a systemic push and pull force, a recognition
gains its authority from “rules of recognition.”275 While what is collectively known—the
codes—are subsumed within hybridity, there is an element of difference that is beyond the
limits of the dominant discourse. Bhabha states: “It is, rather, that the [dominant] discourse
has reached that point when, faced with the hybridity of its objects, the presence of power
is revealed as something other than what its rules of recognition assert.”276 This difference,
resulting in a displacement of the original meaning.277 Hybridity, then, is the condition that
unsettles singular representation while repeating an aspect that is untenable within the
275
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 157.
276
Ibid.,160. (Emphasis in the original.)
277
Ibid.,158.
117
dominant discourse.
desire through the re-signification within classical female love poetry and hidden messages
in modern female poetry. As such, not only do they disrupt the original conception of
xishood; they change the overall meaning. Within complex performances of gabar xishood
of sexual desire along with the initial definition. In this way, while externally this code of
xishood appears benign, it is intrinsically powerful and in some ways unheimlech to the
dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh. Speaking and performative listening through
agency and xishood co-exist, and more importantly pinpoint the presence of Somali female
political intention, nor [are they] the simple negation or exclusion of the ‘content’ of
that “ambiguously circumvent…all the possible positions and names that the discourse
designates as external, oppositional, or deviant.”279 This position that the discourse cannot
278
Ibid., 157-158.
279
Inoue, Vicarious Language: Gender and Linguistic Modernity in Japan, 250. (Original
emphasis.)
118
name is limiting to hybrid subjectivities, revealing the constraints of language exemplified
the existence of a Somali woman who has xishood and sexual agency was considered an
painful, and sometimes original ways of inhabiting a world where none of the available
Through expanding the meanings associated with codes of xishood while retaining
their familiarity, classical and modern Somali female poets subvert the dominant discourse
of gabar xishood leh. As such, their work allows an agentive position that is simultaneously
contained in and runs counter to the discourse. In doing so, Somali female poets illustrate
how social belonging can be re-imagined. This inability to designate xishood and female
sexual desire concurrently within the category of Somali womanhood reveals the hidden
power of “naming” and the “unnamable.” According to Bhabha, since the conditions of
naming are indicative of cultural hegemony, uncertainty is the ultimate demise of the
dominant discourse.282 At the same time, since the expression of sexual desire is contained
within codes of xishood—an identifiable marker of gabar xishood leh—it is not explicitly
280
Amitav Ghosh, In an Antique Land (London: Granta Books,1992), 62.
281
Pandolfo, “‘The burning’: Finitude and the politico-theological imagination of illegal migration,”
Anthropological Theory 7, no. 3 (2007): 332.
282
Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 123.
119
Naming and the ‘Unnamable’ in Diasporic Somali Female Poetry
This condition of naming and the unnamable is a concept that I want to further
research in diasporic Somali female poets’ negotiation with the gabar xishood leh narrative.
There are several female poets in the diaspora, Ladan Osman, Amaal Siad, and Warsan
Shire to name a few, who have tackled the weight of the topics of female sexuality,
ubiquitous disconnection between xishood and sexual desire within gabar xishood leh in
their poetry exposes the weight of this gendered discourse. Briefly looking at Warsan
Shire’s work, I will provide a glimpse of poetic engagements of gabar xishood leh in
diasporic Somali poetry. Shire, a British-Somali poet, published her first book of poetry
titled Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth in 2012. While this is her first collection of
poetry, it follows a similar trajectory as her other work in that it primarily deals with
diasporic subjectivity and the messiness surrounding the politics of belonging. Shire, born
in Kenya and raised in London, alludes to the question of “home” and not knowing where
that is but simultaneously identifies strongly with the homeland of her parents: Somalia. As
such, she has an emotional investment in the gabar xishood leh rhetoric; concurrently she
overtly challenges its limitations. Instead of indirectly using codes of xishood like the poets
of classical and modern Somali poetry, however, she is more open about sexual desire. She
partly acknowledges the cultural restrictions on talking frankly about sexual desire in
relation to gabar xishood leh by opening the collection with this Audre Lorde quote:
120
“Mother, loosen my tongue or adorn me with a lighter burden.”283
Throughout Shire’s poems in Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, the motif of
“fire” and “burning” is constantly repeated. The aptly titled poem Fire has three different
sections, each about an encounter of a woman with a man in a romantic context.284 This
poem, along with other poems with references to “fire,” clearly indicates sexual desire, as
do allusions to burning. In several instances, fire and burning are envisioned as a release, as
Shire’s poem “Things We Lost in the Summer” is the clearest example of Somali
female hybrid subjectivities marked by the coexistence of xishood and female sexuality.
She states:
In this poem, a young woman is disciplined verbally and corporeally for not behaving in a
manner befitting a gabar xishood leh (a modest girl). As I indicated in the introduction,
283
Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994 [1986]), 73,
quoted in Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (United Kingdom: flipped eye
publishing limited, 2011), 3.
284
Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, 18-20.
285
Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth, 9.
121
sitting with knees apart is incongruent with xishood behaviour. As a result, she feels ‘ayb
(bad shame). In resistance then, she blatantly opens her legs. What is clear here is that the
woman in the poem pointedly exhibits her right to be seen as a sexual being. At the same,
by “daring” her mother to state otherwise, it appears she also considers herself a gabar
xishood leh.
Shire’s poetry contains the same refusal to adhere to the naming conventions of the
dominant discourse of gabar xishood leh—with its insistence of xishood or sexual desire—
as the classical and modern poets whose work I analyzed in this thesis, albeit using
expression of sexual desire can exist without the fear of exclusion or unbelonging in
122
123
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